Flash floods take dramatic toll in Lima, northern Peru

El Niño-fueled flash floods and landslides hit parts of Lima, leaving some communities cut off from roads Saturday, as others fled rising rivers and millions fretted that they won't have drinking water.


Peru's geographic extremes help fuel the often deadly force of the mudslides, known locally as huaycos, the indigenous Quechua word for flash flood-landslide.

The South American nation of over 30 million has plenty of extremes: its Pacific coastal deserts in the west are interrupted by the steep, soaring Andes, famed for the Inca people and Machu Picchu in the south. Further east, Peru has hot Amazon basin lowlands.

The tremendous steepness of the mountains combined with many areas that are rocky and sandy but lack the level of topsoil found in more temperate places, mean fewer trees are there to stop mudslides.

After weeks of heavy rain came sweeping toward the coast, it filled many riverbeds in coastal areas that went from empty to overflowing in no time. Some residents on the outskirts of the capital of 10 million people awoke Friday to the realization their bedrooms were filling with water.
 [Kaos.gr/AFP]
18/3/17
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Related:

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• Devastating floods kill scores in Peru. Rains followed a period of severe drought