Guatemalan search brigades on Friday pulled the first bodies from a massive rain-fueled landslide where at least 100 people are believed to be entombed as the remains of Hurricane Eta moved across Caribbean waters, strengthening en route to Cuba.
Governments worked to tally the displaced and dead, and recover bodies from landslides and flooding caused by Eta, now a tropical depression, that claimed dozens of lives from Mexico to Panama.
In southern Mexico 19 people died as heavy rains attributed to Eta caused mudslides and swelled streams and rivers, Chiapas State civil defense official Elias Morales Rodriguez said.
Photo: AP
The worst incident occurred in the mountain township of Chenalho, where 10 people were swept away by a rain-swollen stream.
Their bodies were later found downstream.
The Mexican National Meteorological Service said that Eta’s “broad circulation is causing intense to torrential rains on the Yucatan Peninsula and in southeastern Mexico.”
In Guatemala, the first army brigade reached a massive landslide on Friday in the central mountains where an estimated 150 homes were buried on Thursday.
They recovered three bodies, an army spokesman said.
In a news conference, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said that he believed there were at least 100 dead in San Cristobal Verapaz, but added that the number was still unconfirmed.
“The panorama is complicated in that area,” he said, adding that rescuers were struggling to access the site.
In Honduras, Wendi Munguia Figueroa, 48, and nine relatives huddled on the corrugated metal roof of her home surrounded by brown floodwater, but with little drinking water remaining.
“We can’t get off our houses’ roofs because the water is up to our necks in the street,” Munguia said.
Munguia had yet to see any rescue boats or any authorities.
Her neighbors likewise occupied their roofs.
Her home in La Lima, a San Pedro Sula suburb, is 50m from the roiling Chamelecon River and only a short way from the international airport’s runway.
The neighborhood flooded in 1998 during Hurricane Mitch — a storm that killed more than 9,000 people in Central America — but Munguia said that there is more water this time.
It had been raining hard since Monday even though Eta’s center did not enter Honduras until Wednesday.
Anticipating flooding they had started raising appliances and other household items, but the water entered in a torrent on Thursday morning.
“In 10 minutes my house filled up,” she said. “We couldn’t escape in any direction because everywhere was full of water.”
Honduran Center for Atmospheric, Oceanographic and Seismic Studies chief meteorologist Francisco Argenal said that as much as 20cm of rain had fallen in just the past two days in some areas.
The death toll in Honduras rose to at least 21 people on Friday, confirmed by local authorities, but the country’s emergency management agency reported only eight.
“We know there are a lot of dead people, we’ve seen them, but until we receive official information we can’t certify them,” said Marvin Aparicio, head of the agency’s incident command system. “In the coming hours, we are going to start to see, to our regret, Dante-esque scenes of people found dead” as floodwaters recede.”
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