Guatemala mudslides from torrential rains kill at least 38 and bury 2 buses
NAHUALA, Guatemala — Torrential rains from a tropical depression caused mudslides that have killed at least 38 people in Guatemala — most of them in separate disasters along the same highway.
In the village of Nahuala, rescue crews searched through mud and rocks yesterday for bodies after two landslides in the same spot killed at least 20 people along a highway leading northwest of the capital toward Mexico.
A slide Saturday afternoon had trapped vehicles at one spot on the Inter-American highway, and some of the people who came to rescue them were caught by a second slide, officials reported.
“Under the earth there is a bus that carried we don’t know how many people, and there are those who tried to help the victims of the first slide,’’ said Major Otto Mazariegos of the regional fire department.
Rescue workers have recovered 20 bodies from that site, said fire department spokesman Jose Rodriguez. He said at least 60 people are missing.
A few hours earlier, a landslide on the same highway partly buried a bus, killing 12 people.
That led President Alvaro Colom to declare a national emergency. He said four children and two adults were buried in other slides elsewhere.
“It is a tragic day. Today alone 18 people have died, 12 buried by a hill when the traveled in a bus,’’ Colom told a news conference.
The president told officials to close the highway for fear of more slides.
“There are several hillsides that are loose and could fall. So we ask the population to not go out, to avoid moving along the highways,’’ he said — not long before new slides took more lives.
Heavy rains from Tropical Depression 11-E have pelted Guatemala for days, unleashing deadly mudslides in several areas, cutting off highways and forcing officials to evacuate thousands of people.
