Flooded streets in Tumbes, a town in northern Peru SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA (Portal)
For the past few days, residents of Peru’s north coast have been waking up to waist-deep, murky water. There are not a few public schools who have been handicapped at the start of the school year, and neither are the families who are begging for rescue from the rooftops of their homes. The phenomenon is a cyclone and has a name: Yaku, which means water in Quechua. Specialists have ruled out that it could become a hurricane, but it’s still causing serious damage. There are already five dead in the coastal region of Piura and two more in Lambayeque. At the national level, there is still no precise picture of those affected; according to the Regional Emergency Operations Center (COER), there would be more than 3,500 in Piura alone. In addition, the public prosecutor’s office of the state government was flooded.
Last Thursday in Chiclayo, Lambayeque, a mother and her seven-year-old son were electrocuted after touching a broken internet cable while out for a walk in the pouring rain. In Piura, two brothers aged 17 and 18 drowned in the Huancabamba River; a fisherman lost his life when his boat capsized in Paita Bay; a 50-year-old woman was swept away by the force of the water as she tried to cross a ravine to see the condition of her livestock; and a 51-year-old man was crushed by a mud wall.
Hania Pérez de Cuéllar, Minister for Housing, Works and Sanitation, blamed the authorities for the past. “This is the responsibility of previous governments that have not done a proper job of prevention. The work is not done the moment the phenomena occur,” he questioned. Despite landslides and flooding every summer, no cyclone has devastated Peru’s shores since 1983. In the same year, the El Niño phenomenon occurred, killing 512 people, 8,500 indirect deaths from disease and 1,304 injuries. The fears are justified. For the time being, the probability of an event of this magnitude being triggered is below the level of “surveillance”. Next week, the Multisectoral Commission for the National Inquiry into the El Niño Phenomenon (Enfen) will meet to assess whether the situation warrants moving to “alert level.”
The executive branch has declared states of emergency in 233 districts in the regions of Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Áncash, Cajamarca and Lima. In the capital, the supervised districts are Chaclacayo, Comas, San Martín de Porres, Carabayllo and Ate. The goal is to accelerate exceptional mitigation actions and fix the years in the next 60 days.
“Yaku is descending and that will increase the rains in Lima. The river of the Rímac will increase,” said Defense Minister Jorge Chávez this Friday, and he was not wrong. In Lima, the city that never rains, the sky gave way to moderate rainfall since late afternoon. Cyclone Yaku would remain until this Sunday, according to Senamhi, but rains will continue at least into the two weeks of March.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe to