Argentina Flood Deaths: Why Are Politicians Being Jeered?

In Buenos Aires and the provincial city of La Plata, where torrential rains have caused massive flooding, the death toll has risen to 57, reported the AP on Friday. Amid overwhelming wreckage and receding waters -- which had risen at one point to more than six feet high inside some homes -- residents booed a group of visiting politicians which included president Cristina Fernandez. People yelled, "go away" and "you came too late", according to the AP article, while the minister of social welfare and the governor of Buenos Aires province were forced back to their motorcade by an angry crowd.

More than 16 inches of rain inundated La Plata over the course of only a few hours late Tuesday and early Wednesday. Sewage and drainage systems in La Plata as well as in Buenos Aires were overwhelmed. Police and soldiers yesterday were searching for bodies in houses, culverts, creeks and even in trees as the floodwaters receded. As the crisis moved into the public health and safety stage, minister of Social Welfare Alicia Kirchner stopped in at an evacuation center and received insults and boos, according to the Argentine daily Clarin. "Public works have to be done, stop robbing people", the hecklers reportedly shouted.

Mobile hospitals were arranged for after two major hospitals in the region were flooded, and government workers were handing out donated water, canned food and clothing at shelters. The provincial health minister said that hepatitis shots were being given at evacuation centers and that spraying would be performed to kill mosquitoes and avoid the spread of dengue fever. The provincial government also sent in 750 police officers after a store and an elementary school were looted, while the national government provided army, coast guard, police and social welfare workers.

Safe water was said to be in short supply in La Plata, and more than a quarter of a million people had been left without power. In Buenos Aires, mayor Mauricio Macri blamed energy companies for the delay in restoring power. As of last night, more than 30,000 people were still without power in that city.

The AP article quotes Nelly Cerrado, a woman who was searching for donated clothes at a shelter, as saying: "There is no water, there is no electricity. We have nothing ... and no one comes. No one. Because here, it is neighbors who have to do everything."

Clarin reported that the provincial governor, Daniel Scioli, said that "people are ticked off and they're right".