Sunday, October 09, 2005
More on the Mudslides
Every news story sounds worse. Here are excerpts from a Reuters report:
Rescuers in a Guatemalan village struggled on Sunday to find the remains of up to 1,400 Maya Indians killed in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Stan while officials considered whether to declare the village a mass grave.
A small group of firefighters poked long poles into the brown mud that blanketed the village of Panabaj Sunday in search of victims but feared sinking into the quagmire themselves. ...
Stan's rains sent an avalanche of mud, rocks and trees crashed down a volcano's slopes and into Panabaj as people slept early on Wednesday, covering it in mud up to 40 feet (12 meters) deep in places. ...
Dozens of corpses have been recovered and locals were drawing up names of the missing and dead. With so many victims feared buried, authorities said they might abandon the search and declare the village a mass grave. ...
Some 1,400 people have disappeared in Panabaj, next to the lakeside tourist town of Santiago Atitlan, and are dead, according to the fire department. A local official in charge of compiling death lists put the likely toll at about 1,000. ...
Volunteers uncovered the body of a young girl, her twisted arm poking out from under the mud on Saturday. They then found what appeared to be another corpse nearby but the search for victims was suspended as rain fell again, threatening to trigger new mudslides.
Rescuers in a Guatemalan village struggled on Sunday to find the remains of up to 1,400 Maya Indians killed in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Stan while officials considered whether to declare the village a mass grave.
A small group of firefighters poked long poles into the brown mud that blanketed the village of Panabaj Sunday in search of victims but feared sinking into the quagmire themselves. ...
Stan's rains sent an avalanche of mud, rocks and trees crashed down a volcano's slopes and into Panabaj as people slept early on Wednesday, covering it in mud up to 40 feet (12 meters) deep in places. ...
Dozens of corpses have been recovered and locals were drawing up names of the missing and dead. With so many victims feared buried, authorities said they might abandon the search and declare the village a mass grave. ...
Some 1,400 people have disappeared in Panabaj, next to the lakeside tourist town of Santiago Atitlan, and are dead, according to the fire department. A local official in charge of compiling death lists put the likely toll at about 1,000. ...
Volunteers uncovered the body of a young girl, her twisted arm poking out from under the mud on Saturday. They then found what appeared to be another corpse nearby but the search for victims was suspended as rain fell again, threatening to trigger new mudslides.
