“We lost everything, I haven’t been able to rescue even a blouse,” says Grace Aranda, one of the 15,077 people affected by the floods in Esmeraldas, in northern Ecuador. The rain started Saturday night and continued until Sunday morning non-stop. At dawn, seven rivers overflowed and left four cities under water: Muisne, Esmeraldas, Atacames and Quinindé. “The water came up to two meters inside the house,” describes Grace, who spends the day cleaning up the mud and making sure that the zinc sheets on the roof do not get stolen. “It is the only thing that remains in good condition in the house and unfortunately here the criminals take advantage of the misfortunes,” adds the 57-year-old woman, who spends the night at a friend’s house and sends her two children with relatives to an area rural.
Disasters hit the inhabitants of Esmeraldas time and time again. Grace lives in the 50 Casas neighborhood, which is in the capital of the province and rose in the middle of the emergency of the last El Niño phenomenon, which hit Ecuador in in 1998. The authorities at that time relocated fifty families from other areas that lost their homes due to flooding in this sector that was supposed to be non-vulnerable.
“Now they tell us that it is our fault for being there; However, they also built a huge thermal power plant on the banks of the Teaone River. Isn’t this monster that contaminates us also at risk? Why should we leave?” protests the woman, who is one of the founders of the neighborhood and ensures that no government authority has gone to the sector to assess the damage or provide assistance.
A group of women who wash clothes and mattresses in the street also complain about the lack of government. They take advantage of the fact that they have been given drinking water, which is a luxury in Esmeraldas, the province most forgotten by the Ecuadorian State, where poverty reaches more than 50% of its population and the little commerce that moves is shut down by the serious crisis of insecurity that is rooted in this province, the gateway for cocaine that comes from Colombia.
No government authority has reached the disaster areas, the president saw the situation from a helicopter and the ministers report from their offices in Quito, where it was announced that “100 million dollars will be allocated to care for the population and that contingency bonuses,” said Esteban Bernal, Minister of Economic and Social Inclusion in an interview with local media.
The mayoress of Muisne, Yuri Colorado, denounces that they have had to self-manage help with private companies for the 1,229 affected families, of which 14 have lost their homes due to the current of the rivers. “We have spoken with the Minister of Transportation, César Rohón, and he said that a bridge was going to arrive to recover access to the canton, so that humanitarian aid can enter,” says Colorado, but the bridge has not yet arrived, while the Institute of Meteorology, Inamhi, forecasts heavy rains in Esmeraldas.
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