2024-01-14 19:19:29
As he had announced, President Gustavo Petro flew over this Sunday, January 14, the area of the tragedy that occurred due to a landslide in El Carmen de Atrato, Chocó, on the Quibdó-Medellín highway, which so far left 34 people dead and more than 25 wounds.
The president landed in the sector and gave statements to the media, among which he regretted what happened and stated that the disaster declaration will be adopted, to have the economic resources involved in mitigating the emergency.
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“We express our deepest condolences to the people and Government of Colombia for the loss of human life and material damage due to the landslide in the Chocó region, in the northwest of that country. They be extended to relatives and friends of the victims,” the president had maintained on his social network X, and he confirmed it in his statements.
Petro stated that the Nation will have all the aid required to respond to this emergency and recalled that this road has a history of other landslides in the past, which have also left victims. He said that the risk remains latent in the area because there could be other landslides and also maintained that for this reason measures must be taken to mitigate it.
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“We hope to find the bodies of the people, I hope that the people were not dead,” added the president, who said that the effect of declaring disasters is that $500,000 million can be transferred from the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI) to Invías, so that the work on the road where the tragedy occurred is completed and the work of securing slopes that allows safety on the road is guaranteed.
Petro said that the premise is to expedite these works and that the investment will not only be for the infrastructure, but also for the measures that protect the lives of the people who travel on that highway.
He maintained that they reject the speculation that is made with the prices of tickets to reach the emergency area, where the rescue efforts of the authorities and relief organizations are still progressing.
“We are going to create an air bridge with the Air Force so that, at least the issue of food in Quibdó and the rest of Chocó, does not suffer alterations, because this route is going to have multiple interruptions according to the circumstances in which next two, three months,” he said.
Read also: Video: this was the shocking moment in which the landslide destroyed everything on the Quibdó-Medellín highway
The president also announced that next week, on Thursday, there will be a meeting in the department, with the governor and all the mayors. He recalled that Chocó is the largest territory in the country and that actions are required to transform the department.
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