Colombian officials today formally abandoned the search for survivors of floods that killed at least 314 people in the small southern city of Mocoa, though 106 people remain listed as missing.
Emergency workers will turn to excavating roads and buildings, distributing aid and trying to avoid the outbreak of epidemics in the town, where water and power services remained cut a week after the avalanche of debris-filled water poured down from the mountains.
Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said it will take a generation to completely restore the city. He said the missing could be in hospitals in other cities, lost without phone contact, or simply dead beneath the mud and rubble.
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