Collapse in Pataz: father and daughter were found lifeless after hill slide

The bodies of a man and a one-month-old baby, two of the eight disappeared in the avalanche that razed several houses in the annex of Retamas, were found lifeless this afternoon, confirmed the rescuers who found the sad scene amid the removal of debris.

“We have been able to recover the body of an adult, who is a boy, and a one-month-old girl,” the spokesman for the rescue police force, José Rivas, told the press.

“Most likely, he tried to protect the girl, and the collapse has buried them both,” he added.

They are the first two fatalities of the disaster in Retamas. The recovered bodies were found in the rubble of a market where since yesterday afternoon work began to remove dirt and stones.

Authorities had reported 15 missing persons on Tuesday, a figure that fell by almost half after a new balance sheet.

“We have eight missing persons, including three children,” said before the discovery of the bodies, Defense Minister José Gavidia, from Retamas, where about 5,000 people live.

“We are organizing the police, fire brigades and miners to be able to enter,” added Gavidia, who moved to the scene to lead the rescue.

He also specified that the houses buried by the collapse were “approximately seven”, well below the 60 reported by the governor of the La Libertad region, Manuel Llempén.

CRIES FOR HELP

Minutes later, the rescuers were alarmed by the cries for help of a person who was trapped in the rubble and feared for his life. So minutes later, he managed to escape, but due to the severity of his injuries, he decided that he should be transferred to La Libertad and later to Lima.

Likewise, the body of another 65-year-old man was found lifeless by his own son, who joined the rescue efforts with the intention of finding him alive. The young man's cries of pain confirmed the sad news and his relatives starred in sad scenes and accompanied the body of the sexagenarian to the soccer field where they cried with other locals.

The landslide occurred on Tuesday in Retamas, a remote town located 2,800 meters above sea level in that region, some 500 km north of Lima, when the top of a hill over the houses fell off due to heavy rains that fell in the area in recent days.

Inhabited by families of miners, the town is 16 hours away by car from the city of Trujillo, the regional capital on the coast.

“I was able to leave in time, my house was buried. The collapse left us with nothing,” Ledy Leiva, who escaped with five other members of his family, told a local radio station.

RISK IN BROOM

The search work lasted all night, with a pause of a couple of hours, and resumed at dawn on Wednesday, with the participation of police and firefighters sent from other locations.

It is not the first time that Retamas has starred in such a tragedy. In 2009, an avalanche that buried several houses left at least 13 dead, including one child.

The Peruvian President, Pedro Castillo, arrived in town in the morning to supervise the rescue efforts and aid to the victims.

“We are currently interested in going to rescue those people who have lost their lives today,” Castillo said.

Castillo regretted that poor people in Peru build their precarious houses in unsafe places.

“In Peru we lack a risk map, there are people who dare to make a roof [house] over a river, there are people who dare to drill a hill to build their homes,” he added.

The Archbishop of Trujillo, Miguel Cabrejos, lamented the “loss of human life” due to the avalanche.

“This place had already been determined as a high-risk area,” warned Miguel Yamazaki, director of Civil Defense Preparation.

Avalanches occur regularly during seasonal rains in the Andean region of Peru and in many regions of South America, where it is common for residential areas to rise in areas at risk, such as hillsides.

On February 15, landslides caused by torrential rains devastated parts of the Brazilian city of Petrópolis, north of the city of Rio de Janeiro, a tragedy that left 217 dead, including 42 minors, and 33 missing.

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