Search for landslide victims abandoned
Guatemalan authorities abandoned efforts today to recover bodies from a deadly landslide that killed hundreds of people, and blocked villagers’ access to the site to prevent an outbreak of disease.
“We simply can’t do it anymore,” Santiago Atitlan Mayor Diego Esquina said, referring to efforts to recover more bodies from the nearby community of Panabaj, buried under a mudflow a half-mile wide and as much as 15 to 20 feet thick.
The bodies of the victims were decomposing rapidly an the hillside where the corpses are trapped was still highly unstable, making the rescue efforts too risky, Esquina said.
Authorities also kept villagers 100 yards back from the site to prevent an outbreak of disease, he said.
Shortly after the mudslide and before rescuers arrived, residents were digging for victims and possible survivors with their hands and whatever tools they could find.
Survivors of the past week of flooding and landslides that left more than 1,000 either dead or missing in Guatemala, remained in shelters or gathered in small groups to talk about what had happened and what they would do next.
“They don’t need antibiotics. They don’t need valium,” said Dr Ken Sproul, 60, of Indiana, a member of the Missouri-based non-profit group Pueblo to Pueblo who was attending to survivors.
“They need this,” he said, gesturing to a group of grim-faced Indian women who chatted quietly outside a shelter.
Sproul said he has encountered very few injured people – the large majority either escaped the mudslides all together, or died in them, he said.
Tens of thousands of flood and mudslide survivors were living in shelters, and Guatemala was relying heavily on international aid to feed them.
US helicopters shuttled food and water to isolated villages, and even Mexico, struggling with its own mudslides and flooding, had offered to help.
The government last night issued an urgent call to the United Nations seeking €17m in aid because its own emergency response funds would not be enough to cope with the crisis.
“They need water, food and clothes, and a way to maintain hygiene,” said Barbara Fallon, a nurse practitioner from Williamsburg, Virginia, also of the Pueblo to Pueblo group.
Fallon spoke while attending to Moises Yajcom, a baby boy born the day before the October 5 mudslide who was pulled to safety, but now suffered from a fever.
A total of 133 people were killed in El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras due to the heavy rains, exacerbated by Hurricane Stan.
In the western Guatemalan town of Tacana, near the Mexico border, only a haunting outline of what was once a storm shelter at an evangelical meeting hall poked above roof-deep mud.
Residents had recovered 20 bodies there and believed 60 more were still buried, but by Monday had given up hope of recovering any in identifiable condition. To prevent the spread of infection, officials began spreading buckets of quicklime over the mud.
Highways were washed away or blocked by rains and mudslides in both Guatemala and Mexico, preventing rescue workers from reaching some sites for several days. Mountainsides saturated by rain remained dangerously unstable.
