Mexican villagers missing after landslide
OSTUACAN, Mexico (AP) — Rescue officials were searching for more than a dozen missing people Tuesday after a landslide slammed into a rain-swollen river, wiping out a tiny hamlet in southern Mexico.
At least 16 people were reported missing in the village, the latest victims of widespread flooding and heavy rains across Mexico and Central America.
In Honduras, authorities were evacuating dozens of people on the Atlantic coast, and at least two people drowned in floodwaters, including a 2-year-old boy swept away by a raging river.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon planned to tour the flooded sections of southern Mexico later Tuesday, including a stop at the town of San Juan Grijalva in the state of Chiapas.
There, residents said they were awakened by a rumbling roar and the sound of rocks rolling down from surrounding mountaintops on Sunday night, almost a week after massive flooding sent rivers over their banks. Watch the scenes of devastation after the landslide
It was a roar, like a helicopter was passing overhead, recounted farmer Domingo Sanchez, 21. We didn’t know what was happening, and then we went outside, and there were cracks opening the earth, he said, apparently recounting the initial collapse of a nearby hillside into the river. We ran up the hill … but soil kept coming down on us.
For the next several hours, Sanchez, his mother, his wife and a cousin fought for their lives in a valley where the only salvation lay in getting to higher ground.
Sanchez reached a hilltop just in time to look across the valley and see a landslide cover the home of his grandparents. He believes at least nine of his relatives were buried.
San Juan Grijalva, 45 miles southwest of Villahermosa, is near the border of heavily flooded Tabasco state and linked to the same river systems. The landslide followed a week of flooding and heavy rains that has left 80 percent of Tabasco under water, destroying or damaging the homes of about half a million people.
David Sanchez, 22, a cousin of Domingo, described the events he saw from his house in a different part of the village that once was home to about 600 people.
He described two distinct waves — the first of which swept his mother about 200 yards downstream before he could rescue her. It was an irresistible wave, he said, describing the water pushed down from the initial impact of the landslide.
After climbing up a hillside to safety, in a moment of calm he and three friends briefly descended to rescue some possessions when the second wave — apparently the release of water briefly dammed up by the landslide — swept down the valley.
It swept away everything, trees, houses, everything, David Sanchez said.
Chiapas state Gov. Juan Sabines, who visited the scene, described one of the waves as a mini-tsunami and noted this village practically disappeared.
Helicopters searched the surrounding hills to rescue residents who fled to higher ground.
Chiapas officials and the federal Interior Department said 16 were missing. No bodies were immediately found.
Federal Interior Secretary Francisco Ramirez Acuna said animals were responsible for saving some lives. A herd of cattle, sensing the impending landslide, began running uphill as if trying to escape. When people began to chase them, they unknowingly ran to safety, Ramirez told the Televisa television network.
On Monday, in the Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa, officials readied huge pumps to suck water from the inundated streets while rescuers struggled to reach thousands still stranded days after one of the worst floods in Mexico’s history.
President Bush shared his sympathy over the floods and suffering Monday with Calderon.
Tony Garza, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said the United States had pledged $300,000 in emergency assistance to Tabasco and Chiapas.
Americans know only too well the horrible impact of such natural disasters on the lives of individuals and communities, and we are anxious to join the international community in providing assistance to our neighbors, Garza said.
After Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, Mexico sent a convoy of about 200 unarmed soldiers and medical personnel across the border with portable kitchens and water treatment equipment to aid recovery efforts.
Authorities said two more bodies were found Sunday in the waters covering much of the region. If the deaths are confirmed to have been caused by the flooding, the disaster’s death toll would stand at 10, not including those feared dead in Monday’s landslide.
found here.
