Overland travel was no longer an option. Even breathing was difficult. Last month, a dike broke along the Bogota River and fetid black water, contaminated with raw sewage and industrial waste, engulfed Guerrero’s farm.
Guerrero and his farm hands spent most of their time rowing so their outboard motor wouldn’t snag on the hedges and barbed-wire fences just below the water's surface. Guerrero saved most of his cattle but wanted to find out what happened to his house, his milking machines and his 14 pet cats.
Guerrero is one of the latest victims of Colombia’s worst rainy season in decades. Floods and landslides have killed 161 people, destroyed thousands of homes and put vast tracts of coffee, cotton and sugar cane underwater. Nonstop rains have wreaked havoc in 28 of the country’s 32 states.
Some are calling the disaster “Colombia’s Katrina.”
Yet few people outside Colombia have noticed, partly because the flooding has unfolded incrementally since heavy rains began pelting the country in March. In fact, the Bogota-based media largely ignored the tragedy until last month when flood waters began pouring into capital neighborhoods as well as ranches and flower farms on the outskirts of the city.
All told, some 1.3 million people have either lost or sustained significant damage to their homes.
