A man walks through flooded streets in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. SANTIAGO ARCOS (Portal)
“We lost everything, I couldn’t even save a blouse,” said Grace Aranda, one of 15,077 people affected by the floods in Esmeraldas, northern Ecuador. The rain started Saturday night and continued non-stop through Sunday morning. At dawn, seven rivers burst their banks, leaving four cities under water: Muisne, Esmeraldas, Atacames and Quinindé. “The water was up to two meters deep in the house,” describes Grace, who spends the day cleaning up the mud and making sure the zinc sheets on the roof aren’t stolen. “It’s the only thing left in good condition in the house and unfortunately the criminals here are taking advantage of the bad luck,” adds the 57-year-old woman, who is staying at a friend’s house and sending her two children to relatives in a rural area.
The residents of Esmeraldas are repeatedly struck by disasters. Grace lives in the neighborhood of 50 Casas, which is in the provincial capital and arose in the midst of the last El Niño phenomenon that hit Ecuador in 1998. The authorities at the time relocated fifty families from other areas that were actually affected by the floods in this one non-vulnerable sector had lost their homes.
“Now they tell us it’s our fault we’re there; However, they have also built a huge thermal power plant on the banks of the Teaone River. Isn’t this monster that infests us also in danger? Why should we go?” protests the woman, who is one of the neighborhood’s founders, making sure no government agency has visited the sector to assess the damage or provide assistance.
A group of women who wash clothes and mattresses on the street also lament the lack of government. They take advantage of the fact that drinking water is made available to them, which in Esmeraldas, the province most forgotten by the Ecuadorian state, where poverty affects more than 50% of the population and the small trade that moves to A luxury is the deep crisis of insecurity rooted in this province, gateway for cocaine from Colombia.
No government agency has reached the disaster areas, the President has observed the situation from a helicopter and ministers are reporting from their offices in Quito, where it was announced that “$100 million will be allocated for community care and that emergency premiums will be allocated”. said Esteban Bernal, Minister for Economic and Social Inclusion, in an interview with local media.
Muisne Mayor Yuri Colorado denounced that they had to organize private company help for the 1,229 affected families, 14 of whom lost their homes due to the rivers’ currents. “We spoke to the Minister of Transport, César Rohón, and he said that a bridge was coming to restore access to the canton so that humanitarian aid could come in,” Colorado says, but the bridge has not yet arrived The Institute of Meteorology, Inamhi, forecast heavy rains in Esmeraldas.
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