GUATEMALA CITY – A massive landslide in Guatemala has buried up to 100 people who were trying to dig out a bus caught in deep mud.
The weekend death toll from slides and flooding caused by torrential rains has already reached 36, and the fire department said yesterday that up to another 100 people may have been buried by a second slide on a major highway outside the capital.
“A wall of earth fell on a bus and around 100 local people organised themselves to dig out the victims,” said fire department spokesman Sergio Vasquez. “Then another landslide came along and buried them.”
Emergency workers have already recovered 18 bodies at the site but warn it could take two days to dig out all the corpses.
The incident follows another landslide on Saturday that buried a bus, killing 12 people. Another six were killed on Saturday in separate incidents.
Photographs of the bus wrecked on Saturday showed its roof crushed by a huge pile of earth and rock that almost completely covered the vehicle.
More than 30 separate landslides cut the Inter-American Highway, one of Guatemala’s main roads, within a single 30-mile stretch.
Emergency services officials warned further rain was expected in coming days.
Record amounts of rain have fallen in parts of Guatemala and southeastern Mexico this year. Thousands of people in the Mexican state of Tabasco have been forced from their homes by flooding. Water levels behind some dams in the region have risen so high that floodgates have been opened. – (Reuters)