“By a miracle we are alive.” In this way Mayra de Ramírez summarizes the hours of suffering and horror that she lived with her husband Edilver Ramírez and their baby Cristopher David, since midnight on Wednesday, August 10th, when the Socopó River, in the Sucre Municipality of Barinas State, broke the retaining wall in the Las Flores sector and caused the largest recorded flood in this town.
By Correspondent La Patilla
This family of teachers and their baby were on the farm where they are caretakers, located very close to the river, and noticing that the rain fell stronger every second, they remained expectant, because the day before the river had already temporarily overflowed. This only caused a momentary alarm, but nobody thought that a catastrophe would follow.
The overflowing waters began to rush through both sides of the house. They were cornered, with no way out, and they acted: they took the baby and put him to bed in a hammock leaning against the wall outside the house, and the man and his wife tied themselves to a steel drum with which they could float if dragged by the current.
“It’s something inexplicable,” they both say, still surprised, when touring the property and seeing that a leafy mango tree that is next to the house did not fall and could have crushed it and today they believe it saved their lives. A large amount of debris and logs worked in their favor and formed a wall that prevented the waters from reaching the place where they were with full force.
When the rain decreased in intensity and the fury of the currents diminished, the farm was no longer the same. Everything was covered in mud. Of eight sheep, only one survived, the pig sty disappeared, of 19 milking cows they had, only one remained alive and all the cattle that were held in the corral drowned.