Mexico hunts for missing after landslides kill 45

Hundreds of soldiers and rescue workers searched for the missing on Monday after the remnants of Tropical Storm Earl triggered landslides in central Mexico that killed at least 45 people.

Trudging through mud that was sometimes up to their knees, emergency teams used sniffer dogs to find more bodies in the rubble and worked to dig damaged homes out of the muck.

Among the bodies they uncovered were those of Antonia Orozco and her month-old baby, whom she died clutching in her arms as a river of mud washed over their house in the central village of Xaltepec.

Her mother-in-law, Alberta Negrete, 62, also lost her four children and two other grandchildren.

“My entire body hurts from pulling myself out of the mud. God helped me,” she said with a vacant look, before bursting into sobs.

Earl smashed into Central America at hurricane strength Wednesday, and then hit Mexico as a tropical storm on Thursday before weakening to a tropical depression.

But its remnants still packed a deadly punch.

Hardest hit was the central state of Puebla, where 32 people died, including at least 15 minors, as landslides buried several homes in the state’s northern mountains, said governor Rafael Moreno Valle.

“There are communities that are cut off. It’s taking us a lot of work to get through,” he said.

In one Puebla village, a rain-soaked hill crumbled and came sweeping down on the town, killing 11 people including eight minors. Some 500 families were evacuated to shelters.

Officials did not say how many people were missing. There were some 600 soldiers and rescue workers out searching.

Another 13 died in similar circumstances or washed away in the flood waters in the eastern state of Veracruz, officials said.

In the town of Huauchinango, the amount of rain that normally falls in a month came pouring down in just 24 hours, the Puebla government said.

“An avalanche of mud came down on us ... Our house was completely swept away,” said Claudio Cruz, a 32-year-old resident of nearby Xaltepec, who had been evacuated to Huauchinango with his wife after losing everything but the clothes on their backs.

“We could hear people calling for help from below, but we couldn’t move,” he said.

Several highways in Puebla were ripped up, two bridges collapsed and power was knocked out in several towns.

Moreno Valle pledged to rebuild damaged structures and posted on Twitter photos of himself walking in mud and residents helping in clean-up efforts.

He warned late Sunday that the death toll could rise.

“We’re still in a search mode and we already have canine teams ... searching for missing people,” he said.

More than 2,000 homes in Veracruz were damaged and 18 villages were cut off by flooding in the south and centre of the state.

Geologists are at the scene examining whether it is safe for evacuated residents to return, officials said.

Now it is the approaching Tropical Storm Javier that is sparking new warnings.

Javier, which could strengthen to hurricane status by Monday afternoon, was expected to bring heavy rains and high winds to southwestern Mexico in the coming days.

Mexican weather forecasters said Javier was about 90 kilometres southeast of Cabo San Lucas.

The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometres per hour with higher gusts, and was expected to dump 10 to 15 centimetres (four to six inches) of rain in western Mexico, said the US National Hurricane Center.

Forecasters warned of swollen rivers, heavy rain, choppy waves and more flooding.

Preparing for landfall, authorities set up 18 emergency shelters and closed ports and schools in Cabo San Lucas, a resort city popular with tourists

source : gulfnews