Storm season in Colombia: 95 dead

Floods and mudslides unleashed in one of Colombia's heaviest tropical rain seasons have killed 95 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes, officials said Friday. Some families who lost homes are living in emergency shelters and receiving government assistance, said Col. Eugenio Alarcon, of Colombia's civil defense agency. The government also has been collecting donations of money, clothes and medicines for flood victims.

This year's rains were the most severe in a quarter-century, officials said. More than 22,000 homes across the country have been damaged since September, and about ten percent of those were completely destroyed, Alarcon said. The annual tropical rains usually end in mid-December. Conditions have been drier in recent days.

"We still have some areas affected by isolated rains, but we believe the emergency is over," Alarcon said. Colombia's northwest was particularly hard-hit. Several of Colombia's main rivers overflowed, wrecking cotton and rice crops, and inundating riverside communities. Most of the victims drowned or were killed in mudslides, reports the AP. N.U.