BOGOTA – A rare onslaught of torrential rains has claimed 22 lives in Colombia, displacing thousands of families and flooding homes under waist-deep water and mud, authorities reported on February 9.
Officials confirmed 14 deaths in the northern departments of Cordoba and Sucre alone, where at least 9,000 homes suffered damage. Desperate residents in places like Monteria, Cordoba’s capital, navigated the deluge with motorboats and improvised crafts to rescue what belongings they could.
“We’ve lost everything, all our belongings, all our appliances. And we are very worried because we don’t know what will happen,” Enid Gomez, a Monteria local, told VAN.
The national weather agency Ideam attributed the crisis to a cold front sweeping from North America, which spiked January rainfall along Colombia’s Caribbean coast by 64 percent over historical norms. The death toll stood at 13 just a day earlier on February 8.
In southwest Narino department, seven people perished on February 6 when a swollen stream unleashed a landslide, engulfing homes in mud; rescue operations featured earth-movers and sniffer dogs combing the debris.
Such intense rains are highly unusual for February in tropical Colombia, which experiences no sharp seasonal divides. Climate change continues to disrupt the nation’s traditional wet and dry cycles, amplifying these extreme events.