Tovar, Venezuela ? Rivers of mud, rocks and uprooted trees scarred the landscape in a mountain valley where dozens of people were missing Monday after devastating floods and landslides, the latest victims from torrential rains across Venezuela and Colombia that have killed at least 86 people.

Among those missing was Carlos Alfonso Molina, a 28-year-old bus driver who had been on his regular route home, possibly with passengers aboard, when the Mocoties River overflowed in the pouring rain and washed away parts of several small towns in the Venezuelan Andes.

His younger brother, Hilbert Molina, 26, said he hiked for nearly three hours to the nearest town of Santa Cruz de Mora, over parts of the highway buried in mud, and found his brother’s empty bus partly submerged and smashed against a tree.

“I talked to a woman who saw him get out,” the younger Molina said as he watched a military helicopter land with injured victims in the western Venezuelan town of Tovar, where residents said one riverside block was swept away.

He said troops and rescue workers don’t have any information about his brother. “They tell us we have to be patient,” Molina said, adding that he next planned to call hospitals to see if his brother had escaped alive.

At least 53 Venezuelans have been killed in a week of floods and landslides that have destroyed the homes of more than 21,000 people from the Caribbean coast to the southwestern mountains, officials said. At least 33 were reported killed in neighboring Colombia and some 25,000 people were forced from their homes.

Several victims floated for miles down the Mocoties River, firefighters said.

At least 50 people were listed as missing, but the true number could be much higher because floodwaters and mud have prevented emergency workers from reaching some buses that were swept away in Santa Cruz de Mora, Army Col. Humberto Arellano said.

The floods also washed away crops from potatoes to coffee and destroyed a chicken farm, said Guzman Varela, a 23-year-old resident in Tovar. “There is going to be more poverty because here there isn’t much work,” he said.

Dozens of people were evacuated by helicopter from remote spots isolated by landslides. Cars and trucks were trapped in the mud as floodwaters receded.

Military helicopters dropped off sacks of food and water in Tovar, and picked up evacuees.

Venezuelan National Guard soldiers and volunteers help to download food and water from a helicopter at the small town of Tovar in Venezuela Monday.