Families recover bodies churned up when illegal cemetery collapsed in landslide
Dead bodies have burst from their graves after a landslide ripped open an illegal cemetery in Bolivia.
Up towards the mountains in the south of the capital La Paz, torrential rain has made the earth give way.
It’s turned brick mausoleums into piles of rubble, with coffins dangling above.
Families are now recovering the bodies of loved ones exposed in Sunday’s landslide.
Perched on a cliff surrounded by houses, there’s a fear that freshly buried bodies could contaminate the local water supply in Ovejuyo.
In addition to disturbing he dead from their graves, flooding and landslides killed at least 44 people in Bolivia over the weekend.
Oveyujo, with winding roads and houses built on slopes, is particularly prone to damage.
Deputy Mayor Oscar Sogliano dubbed it a ‘red zone’ after a previous landslide destroyed 16 houses in 2021.
‘It’s a non-urbanizable area, a place where construction is prohibited because it’s a buffer zone for the Arenal River’, he said.
‘The geological conditions make it very high risk, making it impossible to build houses.’
But houses have multiplied there in the last 10 years, and the illegal tombs keep being built.
That’s even after the same unauthorised cemetery collapsed in a landslidein 2020, exposing 23 bodies.
It’s not clear how many bodies have been affected this time, but some people have had enough.
The city’s director of cemeteries, Erike Endara, said: ‘The Environment Secretariat, under the La Paz Governor’s Office, should sanction them because it’s unclear how this cemetery has operated.
‘It doesn’t have an environmental license, an essential requirement for cemeteries to operate.’
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