Desperate Venezuelans swarm sewage drains in search of water
Venezuelans take desperate measures as country-wide blackout enters its fifth day
CARACAS As Venezuela's five-day power blackout left homes without water, Ms Lilibeth Tejedor found herself looking for it in a drain pipe feeding into a river carrying sewage through the capital, Caracas.
On Monday, Ms Tejedor, 28, joined dozens of people who had flocked to the Guaire river, which snakes along the bottom of a sharp ravine alongside Caracas' main highway, to fill up a 15-litre plastic container.
Unlike the fetid liquid flowing through the Guaire river, the water emerging from the pipe was at least clear. Those who gathered to collect it said the water had been released by local authorities from reservoirs.
They added, however, that it was being carried through unsanitary pipes and should only be used to flush toilets or scrub floors.
"I've never even seen this before. It's horrible," said Ms Tejedor, preparing to carry the container on a small hand cart back to her home in the neighbourhood of San Agustin.
Ms Tejedor, who works at a computer technology store, has a two-year-old daughter and takes care of her two nieces.
"The ones that are most affected are the children, because how do you tell a child that there's no water?" she said.
The lack of water has become one of the most excruciating side effects of the nationwide blackout that the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has blamed on US-backed sabotage, but his critics call the product of corruption and incompetence.
After five days without electricity to pump water, Venezuelans from working-class neighbourhoods to upscale apartment towers are complaining of increasingly infrequent showers, unwashed dishes and stinking toilets.
Caracas needs 20,000 litres of water a second from nearby watersheds to maintain service, said Mr Jose de Viana, an engineer who ran the city'' municipal water authority in the 1990s.
Last week, supply had fallen to around 13,000, and since the blackout it has halted completely, he said.
Many worry about the spread of disease.
The lack of water compounds the inability to buy soap due to soaring prices or chronic shortages.
'THEY'RE KILLING US'
Up the road from where Ms Tejedor stood, hundreds of angry residents blocked the highway on Monday to demand that local authorities deliver a 20,000-litre cistern to supply water to the neighbourhood of La Charneca.
"They're killing us with hunger and thirst," said Ms Gladys Martinez, 52, a housewife, who joined the demonstration that blocked two lanes of the highway, snarling traffic and drawing dozens of police and National Guard troops to the scene.
Along the riverbed, teenagers and children accompanied their parents to help carry water.
As two children began stomping in the sewage, a woman warned them: "That water's dirty. Don't start playing around because remember there's no medicine." - REUTERS
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