Prosecutors are also collecting evidence against regional boards that permitted construction on flood plains, the rerouting of rivers and other projects that exacerbated flooding. Poorly constructed dikes and drainage canals collapsed or were overwhelmed under heavy rains.
“There is not just one person to blame,” Carlos Caballero, a columnist, wrote in El Tiempo, the country’s biggest paper. “Everybody is to blame, which should prompt us to a profound reflection.”
In a report assessing the response to the flooding, the Washington-based group Refugees International said that government aid agencies had been overwhelmed by the scope of the disaster, leaving “thousands of desperate and vulnerable people to survive on their own.”
The group’s report noted that the government’s family welfare institute had recently reported that 20 percent of children in shelters in the hard-hit state of Cordoba were at risk from malnutrition.
The rain here in the savannah, the high emerald plain that spreads north from Bogota, exposed how the re-engineering of waterways made matters worse.
The Bogota River, full of industrial waste and sewage and filled beyond capacity by the waters of rerouted streams, overflowed its banks and drowned farms with toxic water. The river even ruptured the floodwalls around the elite Savannah University in the Bogota suburb of Chia, ruining computers and furniture and prompting the rector to cancel classes for weeks.
As the waters receded this month, hydrologists from the Netherlands — a country accustomed to holding back the waters — were called in to help design better flood barriers.
Luis Fernando Lopez, an electrical engineer who is helping the university dig out, noted that while new flood walls would help against future high waters, the problem was that the university had been built on a flood plain. And in recent months, that flood plain had been reclaimed by nature.
Farther north in the agricultural heart of the savannah, fields and homes were covered in black water, even as the sun poked through the clouds last week. The cattle that had not been washed away still grazed, a few chewing floating clumps of grass. Greenhouses that are usually busy preparing fresh-cut flowers for export lay in ruin.
Oscar Pernillo, an official in Simijaca, rattled off the costs to his town — 55 dead head of cattle and 9,000 other animals evacuated to higher ground. He estimated that it amounted to 60 percent of the town’s economy.
A sign outside town summed up residents’ attitudes: “The government abandoned us.”
Liebendorfer is a special correspondent.
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