El Salvador Floods,Mudslides Kill 124, 60 Missing
November 9, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
El Salvador Floods,Mudslides Kill 124, 60 Missing: Mud and boulders loosened by heavy rains swept down a volcano and partly buried a small town Sunday, swallowing up homes as flooding and landslides across El Salvador killed at least 124 people, authorities said.
El Salvador Floods,Mudslides Kill 124, 60 Missing:Mud and boulders loosened by heavy rains swept down a volcano and partly buried a small town Sunday, swallowing up homes as flooding and landslides across El Salvador killed at least 124 people, authorities said.
Hundreds of soldiers, police and residents dug through rock and debris in Verapaz looking for another 60 people missing from the mudslide, which struck before dawn Sunday while residents were still in their beds.
Matias Mendoza, 26, was at home with his wife Claudia and their year-old son, Franklin, when the earth began moving.
“It was about two in the morning when the rain started coming down harder, and the earth started shaking,” Mendoza recalled. “I warned my wife and grabbed my son, and all of a sudden we heard a sound. The next thing I knew I was lying among parts of the walls of my house.”
“A few minutes later, I found my wife and my son in the middle of the rubble, and, thank God, we’re alive,” said Mendoza, who suffered cuts on his check that emergency workers stitched up.
Almost 7,000 people saw their homes damaged by landslides or cut off by floodwaters following three days of downpours from a low-pressure system indirectly related to Hurricane Ida, which brushed Mexico’s Cancun resort on Sunday before steaming into the Gulf of Mexico.
President Mauricio Funes declared a national emergency and said he would work with the United Nations to evaluate the extent of the damage.
“The images that we have seen today are of a devastated country,” Funes said. He called the damages incalculable.
El Salvador’s Civil Protection agency raised the death toll to 124 late Sunday, with another 60 people missing. It didn’t break down the deaths by location, but under the previous toll of 94, officials had listed 61 deaths in San Salvador, 23 in San Vicente province, including 10 in the town of Verapaz, and the remaining fatalities spread across the country. Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza said that 60 people were missing in Verapaz.
Some of the worst damage was in Verapaz, where mudslides covered cars and boulders two yards (meters) wide blocked streets.
The rain loosened a flow of mud and rocks that descended from the nearby Chichontepec volcano and buried homes and streets in Verapaz, a town of about 3,000 located 30 miles (50 kms) east of San Salvador, the capital.more info yahoo news
