Article: Mudslide Tragedy

Guatemala village devastated in mudslide tragedy

By Frank Jack Daniel

Panabaj, Guatemala (Reuters) - Maya Indians and rescue teams pulled 64 bodies from a mudslide in a Guatemalan village, the worst single tragedy from flooding that killed 275 people in Central America and Mexico.

Firemen in muddied, red uniforms carried a child's corpse covered only by a banana plant leaf on a makeshift stretcher of tree branches in the village of Panabaj, in remote highlands next to the lakeside town of Santiago Atitlan.

Another rescue worker, his face contorted with grief, carried away a dead toddler wrapped in a plastic bag.

"There are no words for this. I have only tears left," said teacher Manuel Gonzalez, whose school was destroyed.

Hundreds of homes at the village were swallowed up when a hillside collapsed under heavy rains dumped by Hurricane Stan in the early hours of Wednesday.

Outside emergency teams only reached Panabaj on Friday, and they said as many as 200 people may have died in the town.

Villagers and rescuers dug with spades in search of more victims but it was difficult to find bodies under mud that was 40 feet thick in places. They were considering abandoning the search and declaring the area a mass grave.

Hills sodden with rain gave way throughout Central America, burying flimsy homes made of wood and tin. Floodwaters covered huge swathes of land in the region and in southern Mexico.

Guatemala, where at least 179 people died, was worst hit. At least 67 people were killed in El Salvador, 15 in Mexico, 10 in Nicaragua and four in Honduras.

A Mexican Navy helicopter took time off from rescue efforts around the flooded southern city of Tapachula to fly into Guatemala to airlift 44 people stuck in the town of Malacatan just across the border.

Central America is particularly vulnerable to rain because so many people live in precarious, improvised dwellings dangerously close to river beds and on mountainsides.

Hurricane Mitch killed some 10,000 people in the region, mostly in mudslides in 1998.

PRECARIOUS HOMES
The tops of lampposts and trees poked through a river of mud that had flowed down the slopes of a volcano straight into Panabaj.

"There were only houses here, for as far as you could see. ... It makes you lose hope," said Gonzalez, his voice cracking. "There are no children left, there are no people left."

Some families were awakened in the middle of the night by rumblings from the volcano's slopes and managed to escape, but others were buried alive when a wall of mud crushed their homes a few hours later.

"If somebody had told us to leave, maybe the people would have got out. But they said nothing. Nothing," screamed Marta Tzoc, who grabbed her five children from their home and fled in time.

The area is popular with U.S. and European tourists visiting the nearby Lake Atitlan, a collapsed volcanic cone filled with turquoise waters.

Cut off from the outside world, it took rescuers three days to get here, hacking their way through debris from landslides as more earth tumbled from sodden mountainsides.

Across the region, mud-coated bodies piled up in morgues while survivors sobbed and said they needed food and water. Many did not know what had happened to relatives and were desperate for news.

Though Hurricane Stan fizzled out after hitting Mexico early this week, rain is forecast to continue into the weekend.

In Tapachula, Mexico -- a normally bustling town on the Guatemalan border that has been cut off since a raging wall of water tore through its center -- 72-year-old Luciano Aguilar stood guard with his dog by his destroyed riverside shantytown.

"This has never happened before," he said, surveying the pile of corrugated iron and smashed furniture that used to be his home. "I don't think they're going to let us keep living here."

Some 2,500 homes were destroyed in Tapachula and food was running short.

(Additional reporting by Eduardo Garcia and Herbert Hernandez in Guatemala and Noel Randewich in Tapachula, Mexico)

Tags: Guatemala, Mudslide, Disaster

Posted by elcanche at October 7, 2005 09:49 PM