PO BAG 1: Guatemala

Showing posts with label Guatemala. Show all posts

3 October 2015

A terrible shake, then roar as Guatemala slide kills 26

A fireman carries the body of a child recovered from the site of a landslide in Cambray, a neighborhood in the suburb of Santa Catarina Pinula, about 10 miles east of Guatemala City, Friday, Oct. 2, 2015. The hill that towers over Cambray collapsed late Thursday after heavy rains, burying several houses with dirt, mud and rocks. Family members have reported 100 people missing, but the number could be as high as 600 based on at least 100 homes in the area of the slide, said Alejandro Maldonado, executive secretary of Conred, the country's emergency disaster agency.

Homemaker Dulce del Carmen Lavarenzo Pu had just returned from church when the ground shook and she heard a terrible noise. A wave of mud slid from the nearby mountainside and buried everything just 150 feet (50 meters) from her house.

"Everything went black, because the lights went out," said the 28-year-old of the mudslide that struck Thursday night in her neighborhood on the outskirts of Guatemala City. "Ash and dust were falling, so we left the house. You couldn't see anything."