UN agency blames weather, socio-economic factors for Colombian landslide tragedy

The UN weather agency said on Tuesday that very heavy rainfall triggered landslides that hit Colombia over the weekend, but "exceptional" level of rains were not the sole cause, and many other factors added to the devastation.

"The weather was not the only cause of the tragedy, many other socio-economic factors, including deforestation, came into play," Clare Nullis, a spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told reporters at a regular press briefing.

March is typically a rainy month in the South American country, but the quantities of rainfall seen in the past week have been exceptional, the spokesperson said, adding that the municipality of Mocoa, hardest-hit by the landslides, saw 129 millimetres of rainfall within 24 hours on March 31.

Of that amount, 80 percent of the precipitation fell in just three hours, explaining the size of the tragedy.

According to a Flash Update by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which is in Spanish, as of Sunday, 254 people have been confirmed to have died in the disaster, 262 have been injured and 441 were missing.

The casualty figures are expected to rise.

Furthermore, as of Monday, more than 500 municipalities are at the of risk of landslides in the country, and of those 182 had orange to red alerts, Nullis noted in a press release.

While the national meteorological service is very strong and well-equipped, it faced considerable challenges, she said. "There are more than 700,000 rivers and bodies of water, and it is impossible to have monitoring stations at each one of them."

She clarified that the cause of the disaster was not El Nino, crediting a senior official at the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, adding that climate variability and climate change would continue to produce rain and drought, and that prevention is the most important.

She also said that in the short-term, Colombian Meteorological Agency weather forecasts indicate that there would be no or very light rainfall in the affected areas till Thursday.

The long-term predictions for the season were for above average rainfall in the area, according to the UN agency. Endit