La Paz, Apr 01: A major landslide buried as many as 400 homes in the remote northern Bolivian mining town of Chima, leaving as many as 700 people missing, local sources said. Many injured were being taken to hospital in the nearby town of Tipuani, but it was impossible to give an initial estimate as to the number of victims as everything had been submerged by the yesterday's landslide, said Jose Plata, head of a mining cooperative in the region.
The town's mayor, Arnuflo Robles, who was in La Paz at the time of the landslide, said he had received reports that 400 homes had been destroyed.
About 40 rescuers were on their way from La Paz to Chima, a road trip that can take as much as 15 hours.
An isolated gold mining town, Chima is located 250 kilometers north of La Paz, and is only accessible through a narrow, treacherous mountain road.
Telephones were cut and residents used radio to communicate with the capital.
Bolivia's government declared Chima a disaster area, defence minister Freddy Teodovich said, even as officials scrambled to assess the damage.
“We don't know the real scale” of the disaster, he said.
Chima is so small that most maps don't show it. The town sits on the side of a hill in a subtropical region, which was hard hit by heavy rains late last week.
The hillside is pocked with the diggings of small-scale gold panners, leaving it especially prone to landslides. Bureau Report