Tropical storm Agatha kills 150 in Central America
JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
Flooding and landslides from the season’s first tropical storm have
killed at least 150 people and made thousands homeless in Central
America, officials said.
A car remains buried near the area where 11 people died when a
landslide destroyed their home on the northern outskirts of
Guatemala City on May 31, 2010. AFP |
Dozens of people were missing and emergency crews struggled to reach
isolated communities cut off by washed-out roads and collapsed bridges
caused by Tropical Storm Agatha.
The sun emerged Monday in hardest-hit Guatemala, where officials
reported 123 dead and at least 90 missing. In the department of
Chimaltenango, a province west of Guatemala City, landslides buried
dozens of rural Indian communities and killed at least 60 people,
Governor Erick de Leon said.
“The department has collapsed,” de Leon said. “There are a lot of
dead people. The roads are blocked. The shelters are overflowing. We
need water, food, clothes, blankets, but above all, money.”
In the tiny village of Parajbei, a slide smothered three homes and
killed 11 people.
Guatemalan Luis Perez mourns over the coffins of his wife and
his two-year-old son. |
“It was raining really hard and there was a huge noise,” Vicente
Azcaj, 56, who ran outside and saw that a hill had crumbled said. “Now
everyone is afraid that the same will happen to their homes.”
Volunteers from nearby villages worked nonstop since Sunday to
recover the bodies in Parajbei, and on Monday they found the last two
brothers, 4 and 8 years old, who were buried under tons of dirt, rocks
and trees.
As a thank-you, rescuers got a plate of rice and beans from the mayor
of nearby Santa Apolonia.
“It’s a small thing, but it comes from the heart,” Tulio Nunez told
them through a translator.
Nunez said he worried about the well-being of survivors in the area
because landslides blocked roads and broke water pipes.
“They don’t have anything to drink,” he said.
Picture taken on May 31, 2010 of the Bailey bridge in the
neighbourhood of El Chile, in Tegicigalpa, which was destroyed
by the overflowing of the Choluteca River. |
In all some 110,000 people were evacuated in Guatemala.
Thousands more fled their homes in neighboring Honduras, where the
death toll rose to 17 while meteorologists predicted three more days of
rain.
Two dams near the capital of Tegucigalpa overflowed into a nearby
river, and officials warned people to stay away from swollen waterways.
“The risk is enormous,” Mayor Ricardo Alvarez said.
In El Salvador, 11,000 people were evacuated. The death toll rose to
10 and two others were missing, President Mauricio Funes said Monday
night.
A man tries to salvage some belongings from the destruction
caused by tropical storm Agatha. |
Handout photo released by the Guatemalan Presidency of an aerial
view of a huge crater caused by a landslide due to tropical
storm Agatha, in Guatemala City, on May 31, 2010. |
About 95 percent of the country’s roads were affected by landslides,
but most remained open, Transportation Minister Gerson Martinez said. He
said 179 bridges had been wrecked.
The Lempa River, which flows to the Pacific, topped its banks and
flooded at least 20 villages, affecting some 6,000 people, said Jorge
Melendez, director of the Civil Protection Agency.
Officials warned that the Acelhuate River, which cuts through San
Salvador, was running at dangerously high levels and threatened to spill
over into the capital’s streets.
Melendez said classes would be suspended Tuesday in all primary and
secondary schools and public and private universities across El
Salvador.
Agatha made landfall near the Guatemala-Mexico border Saturday as a
tropical storm with winds up to 45 mph (75 kph). It dissipated the
following day over the mountains of western Guatemala.
A victim mourning |
The rising death toll is reminding nervous residents of Hurricane
Mitch, which hovered over Central America for days in 1998, causing
flooding and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more
than 8,000 missing and unaccounted for.
Rescue efforts in Guatemala have been complicated by a volcanic
eruption Thursday near the capital that blanketed parts of the area with
ash.
AP |