The actual number of people affected by the extreme rains in Colombia in 2010 and 2011 is 2.2 million and not 3.4 million, as official sources previously claimed, government statistics agency DANE announced Thursday.
In a press release, the statistic agency said that the rains, floods and landslides have affected three quarters of Colombia’s municipalities.
The number released by DANE is significantly lower than the number used by Colombia’s national government, which calculated that 3.4 million Colombians have been affected by the extreme weather conditions.
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DANE revised the number of affected, because apparently tens of thousands of victims had been registered twice, and because Colombians who were no longer living had been counted among the number of reported victims.
According to the statistics agency, the departments most affected by the rains, floods and landslides are the northern departments of Bolivar, Magdalena and Cordoba, where respectively 77,000, 52,000 and 36,000 households have been affected.
