Ecuador’s largest city is underwater again. A night of torrential rain from Friday into Saturday flooded some 50 neighbourhoods of Guayaquil, the third such deluge in less than a month, and the national risk management agency reported at least two deaths, with two more people unaccounted for.
One of the victims was a teenager in the Letamendi district, carried by rushing water from a roadside ditch into the Estero Salado, the tidal inlet that cuts through the city. Firefighters later recovered his body. In Pascuales, on the northern edge of Guayaquil, a taxi driver suffered a fatal heart attack as floodwater poured into his car.
The most anguished search is in Florida Norte, where a man and his son, believed to be about eight, were swept into a storm drain channel. Rescuers worked through the night until 3:30 a.m. and resumed on Saturday morning, deploying 20 firefighters, a boat, divers from the water utility and drones. They lifted 22 manhole covers along a 3.5-kilometre stretch without finding either of them. Gridlocked, flooded streets had slowed emergency crews from the start.
Beyond the city, the wider Guayas province is coping with rivers spilling their banks. Officials counted eight overflowing rivers and estuaries, most of them around Daule and Milagro. In Milagro, 283 people from 80 families have taken refuge in two schools.
Authorities blame the run of extreme downpours on El Niño, the periodic warming of the Pacific that reshapes rainfall along South America’s west coast. Since Ecuador declared a red alert on August 28, the weather has claimed twelve other lives across the country and affected nearly 27,000 people. Forecasters warned that more heavy rain, combined with high tides, could hit the coast through Sunday.
