UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Bolivia has declared a national emergency following flooding last week that killed five people, damaged major roads and destroyed bridges.
Over 1,000 families in the southern region of Potosi have been affected, and farmers there have lost 80 percent of their crops, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Monday.
Flooding also destroyed 45,000 hectares of rice, corn and soybeans, the country's major cash crop, in the western region of Santa Cruz, said OCHA.
The U.N. World Food Program has begun distributing food in two provinces. The Bolivian government is asking for basic food and water supplies and for wheelbarrows, shovels and picks.
Almost 20,000 people across the country have been affected in what may be the country's worst rainy season in five years.
"Some people are losing their agricultural land, and in that sense they are losing their main source of income," said Veronica Querejazu, a spokeswoman at the Bolivian embassy in Washington, "Some people may be losing their homes."
Valleys and traditionally dry areas have been hardest hit after the highest rainfall in Bolivia in a decade, Querejazu said.
Heavy precipitation swelled the country's major rivers, triggering landslides and road blockages that isolated some rural communities.
Commercial farming, most of it in Santa Cruz, makes up 15 percent of Bolivia's gross domestic product. But subsistence farming is still common, especially among the two-thirds of the population who live in poverty.
Canals in the capital have been overwhelmed as well, Querejazu said, but serious flooding is mainly in rural and suburban areas. Oil pipelines in two regions have also been damaged.
But, said Querejazu, "We're not seeing anything like New Orleans."
