ABSTRACT
The photograph shows the sediment disasters that occurred at a resort area on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela in December 1999. Cities that had grown up on the fans formed by rivers penetrating through the zonal area along the coast for about 20 km suffered catastrophic damages due to debris flows runoff from the rivers. The particular city taken in this photograph is the largest one; Caraballeda, that is on the fan of the San Julian River. The low-rise houses existed among the high-rise buildings and in the midst of the fan were flushed out or buried under the runoff sediment of about 1.8 million cubic meters that covered an area of 1.2 km2 with a deposit about 5m thick containing many boulders as large as 5m in the largest diameter.
