Stunned witnesses in Peru took out their cellphone cameras as a woman escaped a mudslide that swept her into a swamp of debris, trash, and farm animals.
Intense rains and mudslides over the past three days have killed at least 62 people around the Andean nation. Some 12,000 homes have been destroyed.
Evangelina Chamorro, 32, had just dropped her two daughters at school and was feeding her pigs with her husband when they were pulled into a landslide. Armando Rivera, Chamorro’s husband, told RPP radio they climbed a tree but the trunk broke.
They held on to each other’s hands but Chamorro eventually lost his grip and got separated.
She emerged near a bridge, lifting herself from a current of wooden planks and walking toward the shore covered head to toe in mud.
“There’s a person there!” an onlooker cried out.
Chamorro collapsed as she reached land and was quickly carried by several men to an ambulance. She sustained only minor injuries.
Authorities said Thursday they expect the rains caused by El Nino, which generates a warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, to continue for another two weeks.
Seven prisoners held at the Naval Base of Lima’s Callao port, including former presidential candidate Vladimiro Montesinos and the founder of the armed guerrilla group Shining Path, Abimael Guzmán, were evacuated from their prison Thursday, for fear that the jail may be flooded by the overflow of the Rimac river.
Source: Fox News
