ViralityToday

The incident was triggered by a heavy rainstorm when the residents of the area were fast asleep.
This led to the destruction of homes and property, creating fear and panic among the people.
Rescue team reached the spot- Torrents of water and debris gushed into the houses, muddy water surged onto the streets, toppling homes, uprooting trees from their roots and carrying a violent flow of rocks and debris downstream.
Terrified residents moved out of their homes, struggling to evacuate the area.
Beginning at 11:00 p.m.
the dreadful avalanche took away big portions of the many houses.

Petrified residents who managed to escape to surrounding areas came back to the site looking for their family and loved ones.
There were people who were caught under the debris.
Unless everything is cleared the total number of casualties cannot be determined.
Panicked over a missing family member, a man said, "My mother-in-law is also missing, but we found her alive two kilometers away.
She has head injuries, but she was conscious."

Lamenting over this tragic incident where a massive wall of water carrying mud and debris crashed through Mocoa, the army in a statement said that 254 people were killed, 400 people had been injured and 200 were missing.

More than 1,100 soldiers and Police officers were called in to help dig people out in 17 affected neighbourhoods.

A state of emergency has been declared.

Warning the death toll could rise as the search for survivors continues, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos flew to Mocoa, a place with an approximate population of 345,000, to oversee rescue efforts and declared a State of Emergency for Mocoa.
While meeting the affected people of Mocoa, President Santos said, "We will do everything possible to help them."
Expressing his grief over the incident, President Santos confirmed the death toll and said, "It breaks my heart."

The scale of the disaster is daunting and terrifying.
In the past, Columbia has experienced such tragic natural disasters.
Deadliest among these being the Armero disaster of November 13, 1985, that left 25,000 people dead.
On that unfateful day, the Nevado Del Ruiz Volcano in Colombia, located in the Andes Mountains of South America, erupted sending a destructive mudflow down its slopes.
The resultant affect was a flood that claimed the lives of over 25,000 people in the town of Armero.

Much like the latest Mocoa tragedy, the Armero disaster was preceded by a storm that had been brewing over the area.
The sudden explosive eruption in the mountains was obscured by rain that night, which went unnoticed by the residents of Armero but later engulfed the area and its people.

According to Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, the Armero eruption is considered the second most deadly natural disaster of the 20th century.
But today again in Mocoa, a place where heavy rains, mountainous landscape and informal construction of homes combine to make mud and landslides a common occurrence, there is an oppressive silence with scores on dead bodies lying on and beneath the mud-leaden ground.
These are lives taken away by catastrophes.
But sadly, these memories of the dead fade way with time.