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hatrack

(59,446 posts)
Fri Mar 24, 2017, 08:14 AM Mar 2017

Lima Struggling: Water Supply Cut Of By Flooding, Bridges Collapsing, More Rain Coming

On the bridge Puente de Piedra, 81-year-old Francisco Purizaga looks out over the churning, muddy water of the river Rímac rushing by. The guitar player came to Lima from his home in the northern region of Piura for a concert, but now he's stuck here in the capital. The roads are closed due to the floods and mudslides, caused by extreme rainfall in the Andes, which have left more than half of the country in a state of emergency. "The river swells every year to a certain extent," Purizaga told DW, while pointing to the roaring brown water coming from the mountains. "But I have never seen it this wild."

The mudslides have caused yet another problem for the people in Lima: together with plastic waste dragged from the shores, the mud has clogged the filters of the Sedapal water company forcing it to disconnect most of the city from supplies. Water is now brought to certain distribution points by trucks, where people line up with buckets and jerrycans to at least cover their basic needs. In the first days following the water cut, the supermarkets quickly ran out of bottled drinking water - a further crisis in what is already an abnormally hot summer for Lima, home to some 10 million inhabitants.

"Every day we're waiting here for water. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't," Yoado Merson, 22, told DW while standing in a queue in the neighborhood of El Agustino. While more affluent areas in Lima were reconnected to the water supply on Monday, Merson's neighborhood is into its sixth day without running water. "There are people suffering a lot. Mothers with children. But for me, I guess you learn to appreciate again what you have after a week like this." Four blocks further along, dozens of people are waiting in line to get water. Lautaro Arau, 55, says the mudslides and extreme rainfall in the mountains are connected to climate change. "This is what happens because of the industrialization of countries. The weather was never this extreme. Never."

Down the road, a footbridge over the river Rímac has collapsed. Catijara Espinosa, 32, grew up in a house across from the bridge overlooking the water. "The river ate away roughly 15 meters of the shore. I'm afraid to be here; I'm very worried our house will be taken too," she tells DW. Her parents are already staying with relatives elsewhere. Further heavy rains are predicted over the coming two weeks. "The first days the government didn't do anything, just put some stones a bit upstream. They never did anything to prevent this from happening all those years."

EDIT

http://www.dw.com/en/lima-struggles-with-flooding-aftermath/a-38066531

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