Landslide in Peru leaves 1 injured and more than 200 victims

(Updates the data on victims and uninhabitable homes with the information from the latest official report)

Lima, Jul 1 At least 1 injured, 204 victims and 57 uninhabitable homes left the landslide that occurred on Thursday in the district of Chavín de Huántar, in the northern highlands of Peru, according to the latest official report released this Friday.

The National Institute of Civil Defense (Indeci) pointed out that the damage assessment carried out by local authorities determined that a young person, 26 years old, was “injured by suffocation” and was transferred to a nearby health center.

The landslide also affected 5% of the electrical power network in the area.

The Government of the Áncash region, where Chavín de Huántar is located, installed a temporary shelter for the victims, while the Ministry of Housing, Construction and Sanitation coordinates the use of heavy machinery to attend to the emergency caused in a sector known as Cruz de Shallapa.

The Chavín de Huántar National Museum and the archaeological site of the same name, which is about 2,500 years old, have not been affected by the landslide, according to the Ministry of Culture.

The Indeci assured that, through the National Emergency Operations Center (COEN), it maintains the monitoring of the situation and coordinates the attention with the regional and local authorities.

Defense Minister José Luis Gavidia arrived in the affected area on Thursday and said that “a hill that was in front of the first line of houses” in the town slid and destroyed the houses.

Gavidia confirmed that all the people who were in the area had been evacuated, while President Pedro Castillo ordered the Ministry of Defense and Indeci to “go to the area to deal with the emergency” immediately.

On July 21, the first landslide was recorded in the same district, which did not escalate, but these landslides caused panic among the population due to the memory of the avalanche that buried the city of Yungay in 1970, also in Ancash, causing the death of almost all of its inhabitants, as a result of a devastating earthquake that caused some 80,000 deaths in Peru. EFE

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