Some 70 homes and several other buildings in the southeastern Colombian port city of Buenaventura have been destroyed after a storm surge hit the city’s coastline.
According to local news media, 70 houses were totally destroyed and around 300 people will have to be relocated after their houses were either damaged or destroyed.
The houses were damaged by three-meter-high waves coming from the Pacific ocean.
The storm surge, the abnormal increase of wave heights, hits the coast of Buenaventura every year. The damage was more serious this year as the waves reportedly hit the coast with more force than usual.
The director of the Buenaventura disaster prevention and attention office, Javier Riascos, told reporters that the department is working on quantifying the damages and that the first priority is to find enough wood to reconstruct the houses, according to newspaper El Pais.
Alexis Mosquera, a local community leader, said on Monday morning that neither the municipality nor the state government have visited the area, according to the newspaper El Pueblo.