26 dead, many missing in Guatemala landslide

“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.

Defense Minister William Mancilla said that over 600 people were working on the rescue effort searching for signs of life and removing bodies from the mud, collapsed buildings, and mangled furniture.

Julio Sanchez, spokesman for Guatemala’s volunteer firefighters, said the dead, including two babies, were carried to an improvised morgue where weeping relatives identified their bodies, and families had shown up looking for people who hadn’t been accounted for.

The landslide was triggered by heavy rain late Thursday in the town of Santa Catarina Pinula and small village of El Cambray II, 15 kilometers east of Guatemala City.

Alejandro Maldonado, the head of the Guatemalan disaster agency said at least nine people have been killed and about 100 are buried.

“I feel like I’ve lost my loved ones because all my neighbours died”, survivor Melina Hidalgo, 35, said.

“Eighteen hours after a landslide at least 125 houses were levelled and a few 600 people missing, and the search has intensified (as) rescue teams have located survivors trapped in the rubbles”, the daily said on its website.

“There are people still alive”, Mancilla told reporters.

Climate change has made Guatemala one of the most vulnerable countries to extreme weather phenomenons in recent years. Last month, the country was shocked by the arrest of its president on corruption charges.

“My husband is there now shoveling through soil to find our son”, the domestic worker said as tears welled.

Oscar Raul de Leon and his family abandoned their home and he looked for his cousin but all he found were the remains of the relative’s home.

Witnesses said the steep hillside collapsed and buried the homes.