The president of Venezuela promised “total support” to the families of Las Tejerías, in a tour of the area, where at least 36 people died and 60 are missing, due to bad weather on Saturday.
You can count on the full support of the humanist and Bolivarian government that I preside over. Total support for families, young people, heads of families, women heads of families, communities. Full support for merchants,” Nicolás Maduro told Venezuelan state television on Monday.
Maduro stressed that he had seen “destruction, hundreds of houses destroyed with total loss and hundreds of homes and businesses with partial loss.”
Tejerías, in the state of Aragua, 70 kilometers southwest of Caracas, is “an area of total catastrophe, of disaster,” where there have been heavy floods, which were not recorded “many years ago in Venezuela,” he said.
The official asked those who suffered material losses to go to the reception centers, “until the reconstruction of the houses is organized” and promised that “no one will be abandoned, no one will be homeless”.
On the other hand, Maduro recalled the tragedy of 1999, in the state of Vargas, and affirmed that what happened in Tejerías was a destruction of the same magnitude, but in a smaller territory.
“The mud, the river, the currents [de água] It reached up to ten meters in height. There are marks of destruction in the houses (…) you have to know that Tejerías will resurface with the Phoenix bird, ”he stressed.
Nicolás Maduro explained that 800 homes were affected, 400 of which were completely lost, disappeared and the rest with partial damage. He added that 200 apartments from the state program Grande Missão Habitação, in Aragua and the neighboring state of Carabobo, are being prepared to house those affected.
“In the very severe rain situations that we had, it rained three times more than any other yearand the day of the massive landslide, here in Tejerías, it rained in five or six hours what it rains in a month”, he stressed.
The Venezuelan president said he warned “10 days ago, in a public (television) broadcast, that he was very concerned about the way in which the soils were becoming saturated with water.”
“The mountains were becoming saturated and we had reviewed all the mountains near the cities,” Maduro said.
On Sunday, consular sources told Lusa that Two Portuguese, a man and a woman, died in Las Tejeríasdue to torrential rains that affected the Venezuelan state of Aragua.
The honorary consul of Portugal in Los Teques, Pedro Gonçalves, specified that two Portuguese merchants were swept away by torrents of water and mud.
On the other hand, he explained that while it was raining “the criminals took advantage of the water that entered the properties to steal. The river swept away a Portuguese tire store, and there is information that several Portuguese businesses were affected, including a butcher shop, a bakery, a hardware store, and a perfume shop,” he said.
The President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, offered his condolences to the families and friends of the two Portuguese.
The Secretary of State for the Portuguese Communities, Paulo Cafôfo, leaves today for Venezuela to monitor the situation of the Portuguese community in the country.
Source: Observadora
