Floodwaters Kill at Least 150 in Venezuela

MARACAY, Venezuela — Floodwaters swept away neighborhoods and villages in northern Venezuela and triggered landslides that buried hundreds of cars, killing at least 150 people. With hundreds more missing, the death toll was sure to climb, authorities said today.

In the city of Maracay, the largest in the devastated area, at least 150 bodies had been recovered and about 250 people were missing, officials said.

About half a dozen small towns between Maracay and the coast were demolished by floodwaters on Sunday and Monday after the Limon and Delicia rivers overflowed their banks following heavy rains.

There was no word on how many people died in the small towns or on the hilly highway that links Maracay with the beach resort of Ocumare. An estimated 200 cars were buried by mud and rocks Sunday on a three-mile stretch of the two-lane road.

20,000 Left Homeless

Authorities said about 20,000 people were left homeless by the flooding, Venezuela’s worst in decades.

“I heard a sort of rumbling and a mountain began to slide down--mud, boulders, huge trees,” said Luis Mora, who was driving his family back to Maracay after a weekend in Ocumare.

“Damages are unmeasurable. So is the number of lives taken away,” Interior Minister Jose Angel Ciliberto said.

Not since an earthquake struck Caracas in 1967, killing 500 people, has a natural disaster claimed so many Venezuelan lives.

Rescue teams today searched for survivors on the Ocumare highway, where five bridges were destroyed, and in mud-drenched northern neighborhoods of Maracay, the nation’s fifth-largest city.

“The situation is really bad. People are coming in by foot on the Ocumare road. Six or seven towns were simply swept away,” said Douglas Perez, a police rescue officer, early today.