Guatemala Villagers Lose Hope for Mudslide Victims
Date: 11-Oct-05
Country: GUATEMALA
Author: Frank Jack Daniel
A fisherman in a dugout canoe found a dead 3-month-old boy in nearby Lake Atitlan. The baby apparently was swept into the water by the landslide that wiped out the village of Panabaj five days ago after heavy rains from Hurricane Stan battered Central America.
A Spanish search and rescue team used sniffer dogs to look for survivors but they held out very little hope.
"I don't think there is any hope of finding anyone alive, but we are going to try," said Spaniard Francisco Toledano.
Some in this impoverished region lost dozens of family members in the tragedy, one of Latin America's biggest natural disasters of recent years.
"Thirty relatives of mine used to live there. None of them have appeared," said Gaspar Mendoza, a peasant dressed in traditional Maya Indian garb and holding a shovel.
Pointing to a tree sticking out of the mud, he said: "Another 15 used to live there, only three managed to escape.
"And in this place," he said, signaling at a nearby patch of mud, "about 10 others lived, two of whom got out."
More than a dozen vultures circled above the huge lake of mud and firefighters choked on the thick stench coming from it.
Hundreds of survivors and peasant farmers from nearby villages had helped dig for the dead during the weekend and many insisted the victims be pulled out at all cost but only a handful of relatives showed up on Monday.
"They have lost hope. They realize it is impossible," said Mario Ramirez, the head of a Guatemalan team of firefighters.
BURIED UNDER MUD
Not everyone agreed. "There are a lot of dead people here. They should keep searching," said Pedro Sicay, 43, who managed to pull his family out of his home in Panabaj before it was engulfed.
Panabaj was squeezed between a volcano and the turquoise lake waters in spectacular countryside that draws thousands of American and European backpackers every year.
But it was buried under a deadly slick of mud, rocks and trees that poured hundreds of yards (metres) down the volcano when rains from Hurricane Stan ravaged Central America and southern Mexico last week.
Only one government building and a few homes survived the mudslide. Almost everything else simply disappeared.
The fire department put the death toll at around 1,400 and the mayor of nearby Santiago Atitlan said between 1,000 and 1,500 had died. Only 76 bodies have been found so far.
The rains from Stan killed at least 400 people elsewhere in Guatemala and more than 100 others in neighboring countries.
The death toll could rise since emergency teams still had not arrived in other remote Guatemalan villages that were hit with landslides.
Hundreds of children greeted the Red Cross helicopters that landed in a colonial town square in Santiago Atitlan with supplies of cooking oil, corn and black beans.
US and Guatemalan military helicopters also ferried aid into stricken areas and there were unconfirmed reports some 300 people died in the town of Tacana, near the Mexican border.
A local deputy told Reuters that most of the victims had taken shelter in two churches but a hillside fell on them.
Two trucks carrying foam bedding mats, food, bottled water and clothes tried to reach Tacana on Monday but were struggled past landslides on high, twisting mountain roads.
President Oscar Berger's government was widely criticized for responding too slowly to the tragedy. Hardly any federal aid has arrived in Panabaj or the surrounding area, which was a hot spot in a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.
The storms caused substantial damage to Guatemala's coffee and sugar crops.
Southern Mexico also was reeling from floods and the government said it would spend $1.85 billion (20 billion pesos) in emergency aid for victims to reconstruct stricken states.
(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and Eduardo Garcia)
