The death toll from the floods in Bolivia’s most populous region rises to seven.

El Torno/La Paz .– The number of people who died due to the floods caused by the overflowing of a river in the Santa Cruz region, the most populated in Bolivia located in the east of the country, rose to seven and there are at least 20 people missing, confirmed this Sunday the Government of Rodrigo Paz. «Unfortunately, there are more than 20 people missing and seven officially reported deaths», said the Deputy Minister of Civil Defense, Alfredo Troche, to the media, after conducting a flyover of the municipality of El Torno, the most affected so far by the overflow of the Piraí River that occurred on Saturday morning. Troche declared himself “very dismayed” by the state of the affected communities, where the “situation is regrettable” and “critical” and reported that resources are being sought to intensify rescue and assistance tasks for the victims.

The deputy minister explained that they are currently working with three helicopters whose job is to take supplies to the communities that are still isolated by water and mud and to evacuate people, despite the limited capacity of these aircraft. In the municipal coliseum of El Torno, a shelter was set up to accommodate families affected by the floods, where donations of humanitarian aid are being concentrated and medical attention is also being provided, EFE confirmed.

Eleven Affected Communities

One of the places that was isolated is the Social Orientation and Reintegration Center (Cenvicruz) for adolescents, from where 32 were evacuated the day before by air, and this day they are working to remove more than a hundred who remain there, explained the governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho.

Camacho, who arrived at El Torno this day, assured that the priority today is to finish evacuating the minors from Cenvicruz, for whom a special shelter was enabled in a school next to the coliseum that houses the rest of the population. According to the governor, there are eleven communities with material and human losses, and the damage from the destruction of bridges in this municipality alone amounts to 250 million Bolivianos (about 35.9 million dollars).

The government plans to declare a “departmental disaster” in the coming hours to coordinate more directly with the national government and “receive even more aid,” he added.

Situation Monitoring

The Peace Government installed a ‘Crisis and Situation Room’ in the Government House in La Paz, which, as the authorities anticipated the day before, functions “as a strategic center for leadership, control and decision-making.” This instance will maintain a “direct and real-time coordination” with the Incident Command Center (CCI) installed in El Torno and with the Departmental Emergency Operations Committee (COED) of Santa Cruz to ensure “an organized, efficient, and non-duplicative response”.

The Piraí River Water Management and Regulation Service (Searpi) reported the previous day that the rains that fell in the area caused historic floods of that and other tributaries in Santa Cruz, with the consequent overflows, which also reached the municipality of Porongo this morning, in the same region. A month ago, the rains caused emergencies in the municipality of Samaipata, also in Santa Cruz.