From Zaragoza is also looking at Colombia these days after the earthquake that shook the country last week. The City Council seeks to coordinate different ways of help for those affected and, with that objective, the municipal councilor for Citizen Participation, Alfonso Mendoza, met this Friday with representatives of the Colombian community of the city. It is the second meeting they have held in just two weeks to advance in possible collaboration projects.
FINDING THE BEST WAY TO HELP
During the meeting, Mendoza has transferred to the associations the concern of the mayor of Zaragoza for the consequences of the earthquake and has reiterated the willingness of the City Council to collaborate. «We have laid the foundations for this participation to be effective as soon as possible,» explained the minister, after learning first-hand about the situation that the most affected areas are going through.
The next step will come at the beginning of September. The City Council and representatives of the Colombian community will meet again to analyze the specific projects proposed by the associations and then transfer them to the municipal technical services to study their feasibility. Mendoza has highlighted the links that Zaragoza maintains with Colombia and Venezuela, both cultural and historical and, especially, personal for the thousands of citizens of both countries who live in the Aragonese capital.
VICTIM UPDATE
The meeting comes as the death toll from the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck western Colombia on August 10 continues to rise. The Colombian National Institute of Legal Medicine had received 319 bodies related to the catastrophe as of August 19, of which 314 had been identified. Among the victims identified are 24 minors and twelve foreign citizens.
The scale of the emergency is still enormous. The latest balance released by the Presidency of Colombia puts the number of people injured at 4,437 and those who remain missing at 262, while more than 262,000 people from 471 municipalities have been affected. The earthquake has also destroyed more than 30,000 homes and damaged thousands of schools and hundreds of health facilities.
