AP News, March 1st, 2007
President Evo Morales on Wednesday officially declared months of deadly flooding a national disaster, committing some $50 million to the crisis that killed 35 people and affected some 72,000 families.
"The situation is very dramatic," Morales said at a news conference in La Paz after a helicopter trip over the wide stretch of the country's eastern lowlands that is still underwater. "There were houses out there in the rural areas where there wasn't even anywhere to land a helicopter and drop off food and medicine."
At the tail end of a rainy season supercharged by the climate phenomenon known as El Nino, months of heavy rains have swamped a vast floodplain running from the Bolivian Andes north to the Amazon basin. The flooding has drowned some 22,500 head of cattle and destroyed an estimated 494,000 acres of cropland.
Hardest hit are the eastern states of Beni and Santa Cruz, home to both Morales' most vocal opposition and much of the agricultural land he intends to redistribute as part of his sweeping land reform program.
It wasn't immediately clear what impact the disaster declaration would have on Morales' land reform program. The law grants the government the power to expropriate land deemed idle or fraudulently obtained. But it also contains a clause indefinitely exempting disaster areas.
Federal officials on Wednesday were drawing up a list of the areas to be included in the disaster declaration, limiting its scope.
Floodwaters on Wednesday slowly rose in the outskirts of Trinidad, the Beni state capital 240 miles northeast of La Paz.
Morales has ordered plans to evacuate the city of 90,000 people, but civil defense officials have said that a slightly raised highway ringing the city center will likely be enough to keep the water at bay.
