Two people were killed and some 250 people became homeless in Riosucio, an impoverished town in northwest Colombia where a fire destroyed some 60 wooden homes.
“My town is being destroyed,” Mayor Conrad Valoyes reportedly told the operator of the emergency hotline. The mayor was not exaggerating.
Riosucio is dirt poor, and its houses are mainly made of wood, which is why it nearly burned down in 2012 and turned into an inferno again on Saturday.
Yolanda Perea, one of Colombia’s most prominent victim representatives, is from Riosucio.
The fire broke out around 11PM on Saturday. It allegedly took until noon of Sunday for the firemen to arrive when the locals has already put out the fire themselves.
“As always, it is the peasantry, the black people, the poor of our country that are at risk and that is why it is not national news,”
Perea and her people have survived two major fires over the past decades and terror imposed by illegal armed groups since the 1990s.