Overflowing river causes damage to property of 50,000 in Colombia

Nov 25, 2008, 19:05 GMT

Bogota - Some 50,000 people suffered damage to their property in north-western Colombia after the Cauca river overflowed following heavy rains, regional authorities said Tuesday.

The Cauca - a tributary of the Magdalena river, the largest in Colombia - broke its levees on Tuesday and completely flooded the town of Nechi, in the province of Antioquia, some 400 kilometres north of Bogota.

Nechi Mayor Miguel Franco said seven houses were totally destroyed, while in some areas the flooding reached 1.5 metres. Nechi has some 21,000 residents.

There were no immediate reports of people killed in the flooding.

Francisco Gomez, an official of the National Roads Institute, said other municipalities in the areas also suffered, and several roads were cut off.

'What we are seeing in the streets of Nechi, through which the water runs with really impressive force, is apocalyptic, and people are really alarmed,' Gomez told Colombian radio station Caracol.

The Cauca also caused damage in the towns of Caceres and Caucasia, in Antioquia; in Sucre and Guaranda, in the province of Sucre; and in San Jacinto and Achi, in Bolivar.

The volume of the Magdalena, which has a large number of tributaries, has grown since September due to the rainy season that runs through mid-December.

The river flow increased even further since Thursday, due to the eruption of the Huila volcano, in south-western Colombia, which left six people dead and six others missing.

The eruption led to the thaw of part of the volcano's permanent snow, which in turn caused a huge avalanche on the river Paez, a tributary of the Magdalena.

According to rescue teams, this season's rains have already left some 30 dead and caused damage to the property of close to 530,000 people in 200 municipalities in 24 of Colombia's 32 provinces.