‘Nobody is left’: Guatemala volcano ravaged entire families
ESCUINTLA, Guatemala (AP) — Lilian Hernandez wept as she spoke the names of aunts, uncles, cousins, her grandmother and two great-grandchildren — 36 family members in all — missing and presumed dead in the explosion of Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire.
“My cousins Ingrid, Yomira, Paola, Jennifer, Michael, Andrea and Silvia, who was just 2-yearsold,” the distraught woman said — a litany that brought into sharp relief the scope of a disaster for which the final death toll is far from clear.
What was once a collection of verdant canyons, hillsides and farms resembled a moonscape of ash, rock and debris on Tuesday in the aftermath of the fast-moving avalanche of super-heated muck that roared into the tightly knit villages on the mountain’s flanks, devastating entire families.
Two days after the eruption, the terrain was still too hot in many places for rescue crews to search for bodies or — increasingly unlikely with each passing day — survivors.
By afternoon a new column of smoke was rising from the mountain and Guatemala’s disaster agency said volcanic material was descending its south side, prompting an evacuation order and the closure of a nearby national highway. Rescuers, police and journalists hurried to leave the area as a siren wailed and loudspeakers blared, “Evacuate!”
On Sunday, when the volcano exploded in a massive cloud of ash and the buried houses was dead and would remain entombed there.
At a roadblock, Joel Gonzalez complained that police wouldn’t let him through to see his family’s house in the village of San Juan Alotenango, where his 76-year-old father lay buried in ash along with four other relatives.
“They say they are going to leave them buried there, and we are not going to know if it’s really them,” the 39-year-old farmer said.
“They are taking away our opportunity to say goodbye.”
A spokesman for Guatemala’s disaster agency, Conred, said that once it reaches 72 hours after the eruption, there will be little chance of finding anyone alive.
“We don’t rule out the possibility of some person alive, but the condition in which the homes are makes that possibility pretty unlikely,” said the spokesman, Juan Sanchez, adding that some of the ash was still at temperatures between 750 and 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit .
In the devastated town of El Rodeo, gray soot coated trees and homes and an ash-covered deer lay dead in the debris.
Rescuers wearing hard hats, masks and goggles used shovels to dig through homes, unearthing at least one body burned beyond recognition.
Amid the destruction, there was one glimmer of hope: The rescue of a black-and-white dog found alive in a home where four people lay dead.