BOGOTÁ, Colombia – President Juan Manuel Santos said he will allocate $115 billion pesos (US$65 million) in reconstruction funding to a neighborhood in the city of Cartagena that was destroyed by a crack in the earth last week.

The president said his administration is working to find homes for thousands who lost their residences because they were built on a new geographical fault line created by last year’s flooding.

“These funds are intended, for the most part, for housing, so people who suffered the disaster are left better off than they were before,” Santos said.

The fault damaged about 550 residences and displaced about 2,600 families, mostly from the neighborhood of San Francisco.

[UPI (Colombia), 24/08/2011; Caracol Radio (Colombia), 25/08/2011]