CARACAS (HPD) — At least three people died and some 50 homes were damaged on Monday by the overflow of the El Castaño river, in the central Venezuelan state of Aragua, the region hardest hit in recent weeks by the torrential rains that hit the country. President Nicolás Maduro reported.
In Aragua “we have two fronts of natural disaster,” said the ruler in El Castaño, a sector of the city of Maracay, where he went on Monday night after a work meeting with his government team in Las Tejerías de Santos. Michelena, an agro-industrial municipality located in the same state and where on October 8 an avalanche left at least 54 dead and 8 missing, according to the authorities.
The saturation of water in the mountains, which surround most of the towns in the north of the state, have caused landslides and the overflow of streams and rivers, Maduro said in statements broadcast on state television.
The president ordered the deployment of the Armed Forces, among other security agencies and lifeguards to provide care to the residents of El Castaño, without giving other details of the damage in that sector of the capital of Aragua.
Meanwhile, the cleaning and debris removal work continues a week later in Las Tejerías, where its residents barely had a few seconds to get to safety on October 8, when large amounts of water, mud, debris, stones and trees fell. above them by the slopes of the mountain that flanks the municipality of 54,000 inhabitants.
Civil Protection has a record of 400 homes “completely destroyed” and about 800 with moderate to severe damage in Las Tejerías. Elementary schools, a high school and more than two dozen businesses were also damaged.