Guatemalan village buried in mud, 1,400 feared dead

PANABAJ, Guatemala, Sunday (Reuters) - About 1,400 Guatemalan villagers were feared dead on Saturday under a huge mudslide triggered by rains from Hurricane Stan, in one of Latin America's biggest tragedies of recent years.

Fire department spokesman Mario Cruz said some 1,400 people had disappeared after the fatal quagmire of mud, rock and trees crashed down a volcano's slopes and into the Maya Indian village of Panabaj in the early hours of Wednesday.

"There are no survivors here. It happened more than 48 hours ago. They are dead," Cruz told Reuters on Saturday.

Diego Esquina, mayor of the Santiago Atitlan municipality that runs Panabaj, said on Friday the number of dead in the village could reach 1,000.

The village had about 4,000 inhabitants before it was destroyed and over 2,100 escaped to shelters, the fire department and municipal officials said.

Dozens of corpses have already been recovered and locals were compiling names of the missing and dead, but with so many victims feared buried in up to 40 feet (12 meters) of mud, officials said they might abandon the search and declare the village a mass grave.

Rescue workers stuffed herbs in their nostrils to block out the sickly smell of death. Others barked orders in the Mayan Tzutujil language as hundreds of men dug through the sludge with hoes, shovels and pick axes.

"I have been working here for three days. I am crying for our brothers, sisters and children. I have never seen anything like it in my 73 years," said local peasant Manuel Rianda, tears running down his face. He lives in a nearby village and came to Panabaj to help look for survivors and the dead.

After hours of digging, volunteers uncovered the body of a young girl, her twisted arm poking out from under the mud.

The deaths in Panabaj may more than triple earlier estimates of the toll of storm-related fatalities in the poor, Central American nation. Stan claimed another 67 lives in El Salvador, 20 in Mexico, 10 in Nicaragua and four in Honduras.

President Oscar Berger said the number of dead and missing across Guatemala was still unknown but the likely toll on human lives was "very alarming".

Foreign Minister Jorge Briz told Reuters the official toll stood at 508 dead but that was likely to at least double.

Large swaths of land in Central America and Mexico were flooded and dozens of mountain villages were hit by mudslides after days of downpours.

The storm was a low-strength Category 1 hurricane and soon fizzled out, but it dumped enough rain on Central America to be a killer. The region is particularly vulnerable to rain because so many people live in precarious, improvised dwellings dangerously close to riverbeds and on mountainsides.

Rescue workers, struggling through roads blocked by mud, only reached Panabaj on Friday, two days after the tragedy. Until they arrived, survivors did what they could to find neighbors, friends and relatives.

"There are no children left, there are no people left," said teacher Manuel Gonzalez, whose school was destroyed. "There were only houses here, for as far as you could see. ... It makes you lose hope."

Forty other people died in the nearby hamlet of Samac.

Guatemala's government said an initial estimate of costs from damage to crops and dead livestock was $389 million.