Time running out for volcano teams
Emergency crews pulled more bodies from what remained of villages devastated by the eruption of Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire yesterday, but time was quickly running out to find survivors as the confirmed death toll rose to 99, with nearly 200 people still missing.
Thousands of people displaced by the eruption have sought refuge in shelters, many of them of with dead or missing loved ones and facing an uncertain future, unable to return to homes destroyed by the volcano.
Firefighters said the chance of finding anyone alive amid the stillsteaming terrain was practically nonexistent 72 hours after Monday’s volcanic explosion. Thick grey ash covering the stricken region has been hardened by rainfall, making it even more difficult to dig through the mud, rocks and debris that reached to the rooftops of homes.
‘‘Nobody is going to be able to get them out or say how many are buried here,’’ Efrain Suarez said, standing amid the smoking holes dotting what used to be the village of San Miguel Los Lotes on the flanks of the mountain.
‘‘The bodies are already charred,’’ the 59-year-old truck driver said. ‘‘And if heavy machinery comes in, they will be torn apart.’’
Once a verdant collection of canyons, hillsides and farms, the land is now a barren moonscape. Rescuers poked metal rods into the ground, sending clouds of smoke pouring into the air in a sign of the super-hot temperatures still remaining below the surface, which firefighters said reached as high as 400 to 700 degrees C in some places.
At a shelter in the Murray D Lincoln school in the city of Escuintla, about 15km from the volcano, Alfonso Castillo said he and his extended family of 30 had lived on a shared plot in Los Lotes where each family had their own home.
The volcano is one of Central America’s most active, and everyone was accustomed to it rumbling and spewing smoke, so at first nothing seemed abnormal, the 33-year-old farm worker said. But then a huge cloud of ash came pouring out.
‘‘In a matter of three or four minutes, the village disappeared,’’ Castillo said.
The family holed up in a house that heated up ‘‘like a boiler’’ inside, he said, then made their way on to the roof and then to the upper story of another home. After a cellphone call to Castillo’s brother, rescuers arrived and took the family to safety. But the life they knew was gone.
‘‘Nobody wants to go back there. My children say they would rather be in the streets . . . There are many people who are helping us, but we have absolutely nothing,’’ Castillo said.
Still, there were glimmers of a return to some semblance of normality as Guatemalans across the country donated supplies and local volunteers reached out to those in need.
The country’s seismology and volcanology institute warned of new flows descending through canyons on the volcano’s western slope towards the Pantaleon River, carrying boulders and tree trunks.
Authorities warned that rain had increased the chance of deadly slides of ash, mud and debris. They suspended search and recovery efforts, citing the dangers posed by the rain and new flows of volcanic material and debris.
–AP