Killer floods hit El Salvador

30 Nov -0001, 12:00 am
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Torrential rains and mudslides have killed at least 35 people in Central America as collapsing hillsides buried homes and rivers burst their banks.

Torrential rains and mudslides have killed at least 35 people in Central America as collapsing hillsides buried homes and rivers burst their banks.

El Salvador was hardest hit with at least 23 people killed when the heavy rains triggered mudslides in neighbourhoods south and west of the capital in the early hours of the morning.

Dozens of Salvadoran soldiers, rescue workers and volunteers pulled the bodies of victims from out of the mud today in the small town of Colon, west of the capital.

One grim-faced soldier carried away the corpse of a young child, wrapped in a blanket.

Others used shovels to get to families buried together under several metres of mud.

"Here, there are at least seven people dead. And there, about 50 metres away, another family is buried," Jose Dolores Portillo, a neighbour who escaped the mudslide, said as rescue teams scrambled across the sodden ground in a gruesome search.

The government declared a national emergency and, warning of further rains, rushed to evacuate thousands of families.

"Sixty-five per cent of the country is in danger of landslides," President Tony Saca said.

"The risk caused by this accumulation of water is worrying."

The deaths were blamed on Tropical Storm Stan, which swept across Mexico's Yucatan peninsula over the weekend.

Three days of rains pounded Central America, sending rivers spilling over their banks, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and finally triggering the worst mudslides.

"They are trapped in the mud that drowned them," sobbed Ana Ramos, whose niece Carmen Elena Ramos died with her husband and three children in San Marcos, just south of San Salvador.

El Salvador's biggest river, the normally calm Lempa, overflowed and rescue teams raced to evacuate families further down river.

"We are going to the lower Lempa to evacuate about 3,000 families," said Eduardo Rivera, the spokesman for one of El Salvador's leading emergency rescue units.

Civil defence officials said six bodies were washed ashore in northwestern Nicaragua, possibly illegal immigrants headed to the United States whose boat had overturned in bad weather.

Mudslides also killed at least two people, including a two-year-old boy, in Honduras.

At least four people were killed in neighbouring Guatemala.

Central America is regularly hit by natural disasters including flooding, mudslides, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

To add to El Salvador's troubles, its biggest volcano erupted on Saturday for the first time in a century, killing two people and forcing thousands to evacuate their homes.

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