At Least 152 Dead, 300 Missing After Massive Mudslide in Guatemala

[gatagato]

At least 30 people have died and about 600 are missing after a hillside collapsed on a town on the edge of Guatemala City, burying homes in earth and sludge and sparking a desperate hunt for survivors.

More than 500 rescue workers, police and soldiers, as well as desperate residents, clawed away at the debris with picks and shovels searching for survivors all day and into the late evening, before suspending the painstaking hunt for the night.

Families reported receiving text messages from people they believed to still be trapped, more than 24 hours after the landslide struck the village of El Cambray II, in the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula.

Loosened by heavy rains, tonnes of dirt and trees tumbled onto Santa Catarina Pinula in a valley on the south-eastern flank of the capital late on Thursday (local time), flattening dozens of flimsy houses when many residents had gone to bed.

An aerial video on Guatemalan media showed the tree-lined hillside laid bare above earth, foliage and debris covering part of the town, which hugs the side of a river in a deep ravine.

"We have 29 dead people identified, and one still unidentified," said Sergio Cabanas, incident commander for the government's disaster reduction office CONRAD.

The victims include at least three children.

Rescue workers removed the dead from the tangle of mangled walls, beds and furniture.

CONRAD head Alejandro Maldonado told a news conference as many as 600 could still be missing after the disaster, which he said hit 125 homes.

Thirty-four people were pulled out alive from the mud and rubble, while 25 others were injured, CONRAD officials said.

"I feel like I've lost my loved ones because all my neighbours died," survivor Melina Hidalgo, 35, said.

She was washing clothes when there was a loud crash and the lights went out. She found neighbouring houses covered in soil and mud.

Felled electricity poles were giving off sparks and crying people searched for children, she said.

Guatemalan media reported rescuers heard voices under collapsed buildings and soil as they struggled to dig people out.

The landslide was one of the worst in recent memory in the impoverished Central American country. Heavy rains have killed at least eight people this year.

Marta Guitz, 37, returned from work to find her house buried and was unable to reach Dany, her 17-year-old son, who she believed was inside.

"My husband is there now shovelling through soil to find our son," the domestic worker said as tears welled.

Oscar Raul de Leon and his family abandoned their home and he looked for his cousin but all he found were the remains of the relative's home.

"I'd prefer to lose my things than any of my children," he said.

The government said 600 people were helping sift the rubble to pull out survivors while authorities set up a shelter to help people made homeless.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-0...temala/6824960
http://america.aljazeera.com/article...thorities.html
http://www.conred.gob.gt/www/

Latest update:
Guatemala might abandon mudslide site where hundreds were buried alive

SANTA CATARINA PINULA, Guatemala — Guatemalan officials weighed what to do with the site of a massive, acres-wide mudslide that might still hold hundreds of bodies and a surrounding area of largely untouched homes that has been declared uninhabitable.
Simply too vast to excavate fully, there may come a point — as in the past — where officials simply end digging efforts at the site and declare the area where the unrecovered bodies lie a de-facto graveyard, their buried houses becoming their final tombs.
Officials are also considering what to do with residents of the Cambray community on the outskirts of Guatemala City whose houses escaped Thursday’s massive landslide but whose neighborhood has now been declared uninhabitable by Guatemala’s National Disaster Reduction Commission, known as the Conred.
“They told us they have to get organized, they have to buy land” for us, said Clara Elena Solorzano, 40, who had lived in the neighborhood for 17 years in a house built by her husband. “Also that they’re getting money together to buy us homes, but nothing concrete.”
As the death toll rose to 152 late Monday, questions mounted about why people were allowed to build homes at the base of a dangerous hillside next to a small river.
Conred said it had warned of the risk Cambray faced since last year and had recommended that residents be relocated.
But Solorzano and 26-year-old Sonia Hernandez, who had 10 family members displaced by the landslide and five from another house missing, both said they were never warned of any danger.
“If we had been warned of the danger we were running we never would have bought” in the neighborhood, Hernandez said. “We practically bought our own tomb.”

Many Cambray residents were staying in shelters. Some 187 people waited on cots inside the Salon Municipal, an auditorium the town usually employs for events and parties. Displaced families could find food, medical services, activities for children and psychological services there.
Most people there were homeowners, and said they built their homes with all the proper permits. They said they were more focused on the nearby river that occasionally overflows its banks than the hillside above them.
Disaster Reduction Commission Director Alejandro Maldonado said he had warned Mayor Tono Coro of the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula that the river was eating away at the base of the steep hill.
Maldonado said he was waiting for a report from local authorities about what they had done in response to the warning.
Municipal spokesman Manuel Pocasangre said local authorities had warned residents about the dangers, but the inhabitants did not want to leave their homes.
Maldonado acknowledged there are many neighborhoods like Cambray in and around Guatemala City that are at risk of flooding or mudslides.
“What happened in Cambray is just a tragic case of what could potentially happen throughout the city,” Maldonado said.
On Monday, backhoes continued to remove thousands of tons of dirt from the mudflow with practically no hope of finding anyone alive and increasing difficulties in rescuing whole bodies. Emergency services coordinator Sergio Cabanas said five more bodies had been uncovered. About 300 people remain missing, according to some estimates.
Maldonado said authorities are still committed to recovering the bodies of victims, but stressed “we are not going to risk more lives unnecessarily.”

[Pigeon]

Horrible.

[kellyhound]

nature gives, nature takes

[darkredspyder]

Feel like the majority of those 600 won't be found alive.

[Pink.]

Originally Posted by darkredspyder

Feel like the majority of those 600 won't be found alive.

You are probably right.

I have a very dear friend from Guatemala. I have not heard anything from her. I know that she is probably worried sick about her family there. Most of them still live there.

[gatagato]

An official said the death toll had risen to 69 with another 350 people believed missing; earlier estimates had said that 600 people could be missing, but authorities established that fortunately many people were not in the area at the time. However, given the time that has passed, there is little hope for the 350+ missing ones. The aftermath of a mudslide is relatively way worse than the one of an earthquake due to the lack (if not absence) of void spaces where people could breath: besides, many believe that the mud moves slowly but in many cases like this one it may reach a speed of 100 mph and can destroy everything that it finds on its path: so, often, all rescue team can do is to recover the bodies, and in this case, officials had arrived at the death toll of 69 by counting body parts, such as heads and torsos

[nyazzip]

Originally Posted by kellyhound

nature gives, nature takes

humans breed; nature takes 0.0000001% APR.

[twayblade]

So sad

[Illusion]

Tragic.

[Kelseecat65]