ECLAC Will Present Study on Damage Caused
by Heavy Rains in Colombia

Photo: Olmo Calvo, Flickr

In the second half of March, ECLAC will present to the Colombian Presidency the initial results of a study assessing the damages and losses caused by the heavy rains that struck the country in winter 2010.

The study, or Damages and Losses Assessment (DALA), was requested by the Government of President Juan Manuel Santos in December, and has been carried out as part of technical cooperation arranged by the Government of Colombia, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and ECLAC.

According to the Director of the ECLAC Office in Bogota,  Juan Carlos Ramírez, the results “will enable the Government and Colombian society as a whole to devise better policies for recovery, reconstruction and adaptation”.

This is because assessing the damages and losses caused by the rain lays the foundations for planning public investment aimed at rehabilitating the country.

The rainfall caused flooding, landslides, erosion and avalanches, and is estimated to have affected over two million people and submerged more than 800,000 hectares of land (more than the area usually flooded by the water basin in the marshy north of the country).

The most serious damage was sustained by the transport infrastructure (especially highways), housing and agriculture.

ECLAC is also calculating the economic impact of the disaster on the education and health sectors, on aqueducts and sewerage systems, on municipal buildings, child protection services, the energy infrastructure and production sectors such as mining and industry.

In a second phase, ECLAC will carry out a more detailed assessment of the characteristics of the people and households affected, using the registry of flood victims being compiled by the National Department of Statistics of Colombia.