Guatemala volcano death toll rises

EL RODEO, GUATEMALA — Rescuers on Monday pulled at least 10 people alive from ash drifts and mud flows that poured down the slopes of Guatemala’s erupting Volcano of Fire, but officials said at least 33 people were dead and the toll was expected to rise.

The head of the country’s disaster agency, Sergio Cabanas, gave the updated death toll, but said rescuers using helicopters had pulled 10 people from areas swept over by a towering cloud of thick ash, mud or lava.

Residents of El Rodeo, about 12 kilometres downslope from the crater, said they were caught unaware by fast-moving pyroclastic flows when the volcano west of Guatemala City exploded Sunday, sending towering clouds of ash miles into the air. Searing flows of ash mixed with water and debris down its flanks, blocking roads and burning homes.

The charred landscape left behind was still too hot to touch or even to pull bodies from in many parts, melting the shoes of rescuers. Workers told of finding bodies so thickly coated with ash they appeared to be statues. Inhaling ash or hot volcanic gases can asphyxiate people quickly.

Hilda Lopez said the volcanic mud swept into her village of San Miguel Los Lotes, just below the mountain’s flanks. She still doesn’t know where her mother or her sister are.

“We were at a party, celebrating the birth of a baby, when one of the neighbours shouted at us to come out and see the lava that was coming,” Lopez recalled. “We didn’t believe it, and when we went out the hot mud was already coming down the street.”

“My mother was stuck there, she couldn’t get out,” said Lopez, weeping and holding her face in her hands.

Disaster agency spokesperson David de Leon said 18 bodies had been found in San Miguel Los Lotes. Lopez’s husband, Joel Gonzalez, said his father was had been unable to escape and was believed to be “buried back there, at the house.”

In the village of El Rodeo, some locals said they never learned of the danger until it was upon them.

“Conred (the disaster agency) never told us to leave. When the lava was already here they passed by in their pickup trucks telling at us to leave, but the cars did not stop to pick up the people,” said Rafael Letran.