Hundreds feared dead in Guatemala landslides

[Meatpie]

[SUB]The aftermath of the landslide in Cambray near Guatemala City on Friday.[/SUB]

Hopes have faded of finding hundreds of people still missing after a huge landslide in Guatemala.


At least 86 people have been killed in the disaster which struck near the capital Guatemala City on Thursday night, burying homes under tons of earth and rubble.


Authorities in Santa Catarina Pinula said 350 people were still unaccounted for as rescue worklers continued to scrabble through the debris looking for survivors.


Loosened by rain, tons of earth, rock and trees cascaded onto part of the town from the hillside above, flattening houses and trapping residents who had gone home for the night.


The homes engulfed by the deluge, which were built in a neighborhood of the town known as El Cambray II near the bottom of a ravine, now risk becoming tombs.


Sergio Cabanas, a senior official at disaster agency Conred, told a news conference that he doubted any other survivors would be found. “But we have enough hope to keep looking, even if just one more person gets out alive,” he said.
Clutching photos of loved ones, families of victims stood in line outside a makeshift morgue near the excavation site, some of them crying, to see if they recognized any corpses.


Ana Maria Escobar, a 48-year-old housewife, sobbed as she waited for news of 21 missing family members who lived in the town that she had left only a year ago.


“This is the worst thing that has happened to us,” she said. “So far only my sister-in-law has been found.”


At last count, the attorney general’s office reported 73 dead via Twitter, though fears that hundreds more remain trapped threaten to make the landslide one of the worst natural disasters to hit Central America in recent years.