The early morning of November 19th, 2020 will remain etched forever in the memory of the inhabitants of Santa Ana, a town located in the Paraguaná Peninsula, right where the “Cerro Santa Ana” natural monument is.
By Correspondent La Patilla
That dawn has been the darkest they remember, because after heavy rainfall, the hill was saturated with water and the nightmare began. Almost the entire town was flooded.
“The water came with all its might, it took everything. We were left with nothing. It is incredible how everything happened, we thought that the sun would never rise, only the water could be seen. I saw how the current swept away the kitchen and we couldn’t do anything,” said Jesús Arenas, a resident of Santa Ana.
After that landslide, they spent three days in the dark, without electricity, but with abundant promises from politicians who visited the site of the tragedy.
The current Mayor, Abel Petit, together with his team, showed up in the town and promised to clean up the creeks, the streets and, above all, the dredging the riverbed towards the natural monument to prevent the rivers from destroying the houses, where the mud reached up to a meter high.
“They promised us villas and castles, and they didn’t deliver. Our needs are still intact, we have not even been able to recover from that disaster. The houses have marks on the walls to the height where the mud reached, because we don’t even have enough money to buy a can of paint and cover up those marks that remind us that we were left with nothing,” recalled Arenas.
This dramatic history seems that can repeat itself. Every time it rains heavily on the hill, everyone begins to pray that those streams do not overflow and end up taking everything in their path.
On November 8th, almost two years after the tragedy from which they still have not recovered, it rained with such intensity that the ravines came out of their banks again, although not to the same extent as on November 19th, 2020.
However, the “Sur” and “El Cardonal” neighborhoods were flooded, and unfortunately these residents of Falcón State again lost the few belongings they had recovered.
And once again, a commission from Maduro’s regime was in town to offer to clean up the creeks, task which should have been carried out two years ago and but never happened.
The overflow left almost all the streets of the town flooded. It was not even possible to transit any of the roads. Fortunately, the water level dropped and the residents themselves began to clean up.
They Helped Those Who Didn’t Need It
In the 2020 landslide, Civil Protection detailed that 1,080 families were affected and 942 houses were flooded in 12 villages, but this year there was no official information on the quantification of the cases.
Hermeticism is what has prevailed in this period when many Venezuelans have suffered the onslaught of intense rainfall. Details of the tragedy are only known at the time of addressing those affected.
For example, one of the many families affected by this natural phenomenon lost all their belongings and part of the roof of the house that they have not been able to replace. Elizabeth Salina lives in a small house with eight people, including three children. Due to the landslide of 2020, she lost everything, including the roof of one of the rooms in the house, which she has not been able to fix.
“I saw how my kitchen was washed away. We only had left the clothes we were wearing, because even the window was lost. Of course, with water, the plywood fell apart. Now we are living as we can. We still have the room without a roof, the floor is practically pure dirt and we all sleep in one room, praying to God that this does not happen again,” stated the woman.
She recalled that the regime’s politicians arrived with mattresses, refrigerators, stoves and some other things, but it was insufficient for the number of people who lost everything. So, they concentrated on a single neighborhood and neglected the others. “They went to the “La Malonera” neighborhood, where there was no longer any flooding, because the streams passed them by one side and they handed over everything there. Those people didn’t lose anything, we did, and they didn’t help us.”
“As the days passed, I realized that we had to clean the house ourselves, find a way to raise the entrance in case that tragedy happens again, and make do with what we had left, which was almost nothing. I was not wrong, we received no help, they did not return after the photos were taken. The house still has the watermark of that tragedy, and when I think about it, it gives me a lot of anxiety and I want to cry even though fortunately we are alive,” stated Salina.
Half A Century Protected
The “Cerro Santa Ana” natural monument consists of three peaks, a hill that extends through two municipalities of the Paraguaná peninsula (Carirubana and Falcón) and that can be seen from the island of Aruba, because it has a height of 830 meters and an area of 1,900 hectares.
It was declared a natural monument on June 14th, 1972 and is under the protection of the National Parks Institute (Inparques).
It has five biotic floors that, despite the arid climate of Paraguaná, are not altered. Different flora and fauna can be found at each elevation floor, and they are distributed in xerophilous, tropophilous, cloud forest, Antillean scrub and dwarf vegetation.
The villages of Santa Ana, Moruy and Buena Vista grew around the monument. The people live by raising animals and small farming, although over the years these activities have diminished due to the increase in the theft of goats and sheep, and the lack of water for planting.
These communities can suffer up to three months without piped drinking water, and that terrible circumstance forced them to climb the hill two years ago to bring spring water to their homes and at least satisfy this basic need. It is commented in the town of Santa Ana that these actions for the search for water could be the main factor that caused the hill to suffer a landslide.
What Science Says
After the landslide that affected five areas of the natural monument, researchers from the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (Ivic) visited the scene to analyze what happened in the natural monument and promised to give the results to the population and the rulers to find solutions that do not alter the ecosystem of the natural monument and protects the inhabitants and its surroundings without threatening the environment. However, to date the inhabitants of Santa Ana confirmed that this information never reached their hands. They know a study was done, but they don’t know its results.
Alberto Núñez, local park ranger chief, with 43 years of service in Falcón State and 29 years as a volunteer in the Cerro Santa Ana natural monument, explained that the Ivic reported that this landslide was due to three telluric movements that occurred one day before the landslide, favored by the alterations suffered by the ecosystem, because they were extracting water from its different floors.
Mr. Núñez assured that in part human intervention on the hill triggered the overflow of the streams. “It is a way to protect itself. Fortunately, no more than that happened. In that study it was found that the peninsula is full of underground water and that the soil of the hill is full of water. It was also found that the natural monument has the ability to regenerate, since it has done it alone before. Of the five landslides that happened, there is only one open area left that is recovering little by little.”
“From down here you could see the five scratches on the hill, which are no longer there. Only the largest gash remains open, but every day when we do the inspection, we see how little by little it is recovering. The hill was closed to the public for almost a year and a half, and the roads are once again suitable for them to climb and discover its benefits and beauties,” said the park ranger.
Inparques Works With Bare Hands
The natural monument is guarded by four groups of 21 park rangers, all inhabitants of the nearby villages who have been getting to know Cerro Santa Ana in order to protect it. They have two offices: the main one located in Santa Ana and the second one in Moruy.
Mr. Núñez organizes these groups and also 35 young park rangers from 5 years old to 14 years old, who reside in the community and begin to prepare to protect the monument.
They do all this work practically ad honorem, because the low salary they earn is used to improve their working conditions. “We bought a water tank that costs eight dollars to be able to clean the office space and have water in the bathrooms, especially in case a tourist comes. Also with our salary we have made raffles to buy portable radios, lights, flashlights, cleaning material and cell phones. Every month, a worker has a new cell phone, thanks to the cooperative, because we were all incommunicado,” explained Núñez.
This group is concerned about security, since the town does not have a police force, this has led to illegal hunters entering the monument to kill unique species such as the deer, the wren and the backpacker mouse. Although Inparques calls for us to stop them, we fear being attacked by these groups.
A Town That Can Not Recover
Although there are no official figures of the families affected by the recent rains in Santa Ana, when walking through the town it is evident that there are many needs: the streets are full of holes and the sadness is seen in the faces of the terrified people who fear new floods will drag away what little they have left.
There are still many scars from the landslide, and also a feeling of abandonment caused by unfulfilled promises that were never meant to be kept. “The streams overflowed and they came again to promise that they will clean them up. Photos were taken and they covered themselves in mud to say that they were helping us, but the only thing we receive is a bag of food with the Clap products,” said one of the residents of Santa Ana with dismay.