Impressive videos recorded the anguish and helplessness in the middle of the fire in Riosucio, Chocó

El Chocó, in the Colombian Pacific, continues to be the victim of bad news: first the water and then the fire. As a result of the winter season, the department has nearly 35,000 victims and, today, as a result of a fire that started the night of November 28 and spread during the early morning of November 29, there are already 50 families who have lost their homes, after to be incinerated.

The information was confirmed by the mayor of the municipality of Riosucio, victim of the conflagration, Conrad Valoyes Mendoza, who made an emergency call to the National Government due to the seriousness of the situation and requested the support of a helicopter to calm the flames.

“We have an emergency in the municipal seat of Riosucio, a great conflagration. At this time 25 homes have been cremated (…). I want to call on the National Government to help us, please, my people are ending! Let them help us with helicopters, because we have several pumps working, but they are not enough “, were his words, at dawn, in a video posted on the social networks of the Government of Chocó.

Hours later, Mayor Valoyes confirmed that there were no longer 25 affected homes, but 50. In addition, he reported the death of two citizens and the disappearance of one. According to him. The necessary support had not been obtained from the Presidency and the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD).

“Management Committee advances the Government of Chocó, in a Unified Command Post where An emergency (fire) in Riosucio is analyzed, which partially leaves approximately 50 homes affected (250 people affected), two deaths and one missing”He wrote on his Twitter account.

Although the causes of the fire in the municipal seat of Riosucio, where about 1,000 people live, are unknown, the truth is that since 11 pm its residents have cried out for help. Apparently, in the municipality there are no fire engines, so the flames could not be controlled.

Chocoana leader Yolanda Perea sent a message

“It hurts, because they tell me that a young woman died together with a girl in her arms, trying to escape from the flames”, is one of the phrases of the moving testimony of the social leader of the Pacific, Yolanda Perea, in which she questions the lack of attention to the fire that occurred between the night of November 28 and the early morning of November 29, in the municipality of Riosucio, Chocó.

“The firefighters never came, because we don’t have an aqueduct, so we don’t have firefighters. When these things happen, it’s time to ask for help from the municipalities, from the nearby departments “explained the leader.

What hurts him the most, however, is that the lack of attention to the fire was the product of the permanent abandonment of a people that “has been hit by violence, by the dispossession of the land, by the murder of our parents and violence. sexual that many of us had to live as girls ”. According to her, now, when they try to “smile at life, things happen like a fire, in which there is no one to help pay for it.”

“This hurts, it hurts a lot, because I don’t understand until when, our black, peasant and indigenous peoples are going to continue to carry the burden, it is hard because we bite the bullet and smile. We invent new ways of living so that they do not see us as the poor, but nothing is enough, nothing is enough, because when violence does not end us, hunger ends, the dispossession of our lands … ”, he concluded.