200 missing after slip

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33520, 29 April 1974, Page 14

200 missing after slip

(5.2. Press Association—Copyright)

LIMA (Peru), April 28. More than 200 people are missing and feared dead after a huge landslide that dammed a powerful river in the central Andes into a 10-mile-long artificial lake.

Civil defence officials say. the Mauyucmarco Mountain collapsed on Frday, sending tons of earth into the Mantaro River about 125 miles; east of Lima. The blocked’ river formed an artificial lake’ and rose rapidly. The police say they fear 200 persons in nearby villages drowned in the rising waters. Another 21 persons in a highway work crew apparently were buried in the landslide.

Three Andean towns are in danger of being engulfed by the rising floodwaters. The landslides were caused either by earth tremors on Thursday night or by recent ( heaw ram. The 10,000 inhabitants of! the three towns were being' brought out yesterday in case) floodwaters behind the dam: burst on to them.

According to aerial observations bv civil defence and air force pilots, the dam stretches two miles across a steep canyon in the Andes. The pilots say the lake was rising in places at the rate of three feet an hour. The authorities report that dynamite teams flown in by helicopter had blown a breach in the artificial dam. and the water level was slowly beginning to subside 1

The landslide cut two miles off an 'mportant highway between the Andean cities of Ayacucho and Huancayo. The highway runs parallel to the river.

Meanwhile, in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian Minister of the Interior (Mr Ranget Reis) said today that many of the flood victims in the northeastern states of Brazil had probablv died of starvation. The Minister said, after flying over areas hit bv four days of floods, that he saw peopl* stranded on isolated nill-tcrp# desperately waving to him for food as he flew in a helicopter over Ceara State yesterday. He ordered an immediate rescue operation to pluck an estimated 5000 people from isolated spots. According to Gears state government reports. one-third of these are children.

The rescued persons will

be taken to special Govern-; ment camps to be fed, for the first time in days. However. Mr Reis said, that! many of the flood victims had probably already died of hunger. Although there is no offiicial death toll, some 150,000 ’people were left homeless by the floods 10 days ago in I five of the nine impoverished j north-eastern states, and offiicials spoke of “hundreds” of ; victims.

Less than three weeks before. the worst floods in Brazil’s history hit the south of the country, causing the deaths of an estimated 2000 people.