The disaster prompted government to declare a 60-day state of emergency in November last year
BOGOTA (AlertNet)- Lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the Colombian government over failings to take measures to prevent widespread damage following the country’s worst flooding in more than three decades, Colombia’s leading daily El Tiempo reported.
Torrential rains battering Colombia since the middle of last year have killed over 280 people, driven hundreds of thousands from their homes and disrupted the lives of 2.2 million in total, according to government figures.
The disaster prompted President Juan Manuel Santos' government to declare a 60-day national state of emergency in November last year.
A group of lawyers representing around 1,700 families are seeking $1.6 million in compensation for businesses, homes and livestock lost after a major dike in Colombia’s Atlantic coast burst last November following months of heavy rains.
A decision by a local judge about whether the lawsuit against the Bogota government can proceed is expected in a week.
The Colombian case comes less than a week after local media in Chile said a Chilean court had ruled that the families of some of the people killed in last year's earthquake could sue former president Michelle Bachelet and other senior government officials over failings in the country's tsunami warning system.
More than 500 people died following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it triggered, which devastated coastal towns in central and southern Chile.
BROKEN DIKE
In northern Colombia, the broken dike, known as Dique Canal, wreaked havoc forcing nearly 100,000 families from their homes. It destroyed swathes of farmland and wiped out towns, bridges and roads.
U.S. engineers sent by the Colombian government to survey the broken dike likened the disaster to damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Fernando Prada, one of several lawyers representing the plaintiffs, says the dike should have been able to withstand the torrential rains.
“President Santos himself said during one emergency meeting in Bogota that this should have never occurred, and that it could have been avoided,” Prada told El Tiempo.
The lawyers say the government and local authorities failed in general to implement preventative measures to lessen the impact of heavy rains, despite receiving advance warnings from the country’s meteorological agency (IDEAM) to expect months of bad weather.
The widespread damage caused by the flooding, which the government estimates at $5.2 billion, has exposed the lack of an effective early warning system in Colombia as well as basic flood prevention measures such as unblocking drains and putting proper sewage systems.
Cesario Marenco, one of hundreds of thousands of Colombians affected by the floods, said efforts should be focused on reconstruction and speeding up the delivery of humanitarian aid. The resident of the town of Manati, one of many towns submerged in the wake of the broken dike, said filing lawsuits against the government only diverted attention away from urgent needs.
“These lawsuits take a long time and what we need is that aid arrives quickly,” El Tiempo quoted Marenco as saying.
Some local communities in the worst-affected areas along Colombia’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts have criticised the government for not providing sufficient aid and food amid allegations of corruption and irregularities in distribution.
Tens of thousands of Colombians remain living in makeshift shelters and are dependent on food aid, while some deluged towns and farmlands remain submerged under flood waters.
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