NEWS RELEASE
Heavy rains produced flooding and mudslides in Quito, Ecuador, on Monday, January 31, killing 24 and injuring 48, with several people still missing. Delicia Bravo Aguilar and Peter Wigginton, workers with Mennonite Mission Network, reported that their family and all members of Iglesia Menonita de Quito (Quito Mennonite Church) are safe.
"Quito hadn’t seen this much rain since 2003 and another mudslide similar to this one had also happened back in 1975," Wigginton wrote in an email on Thursday, February 3.
The abnormally heavy rains also caused rivers to overflow and brought extensive damage to the central Ecuador province of Cotopaxi, south of Quito. Several Indigenous communities were affected, and some regions are now inaccessible due to flood-damaged roads.
Iglesia Menonita de Quito has donated non-perishable food supplies to affected neighborhoods in the city and is coordinating with the local Indigenous Evangelical church federation chapter in Cotopaxi to send food supplies to communities in the province.
"We ask for prayers for the families and communities who are suffering, and we also ask for prayers for wisdom," Wigginton wrote. "God in Genesis asks us to take care of God’s creation. In the Andean Kichwa tradition, we are to take care of creation since it gives us life. But when frantic urbanization doesn’t take into account natural cycles of water, mud, erosion, things can go terribly wrong, like they did in 1975 and again this past week."
For more information on Mission Network ministries in Ecuador, click here.
