Death Toll From 2015 Guatemalan Mudslide Rise to 73
Thursday’s landslide in Guatemala has so far led to 73 deaths.
The BBC reports that aside from the people that were killed when a hillside collapsed on houses in the village of El Cambray, 350 people are still considered missing.
According to CNN, Alejandro Maldonado, the acting president of Guatemala, puts the number of missing higher, saying, "The figure we are using as potentially missing -- and I want to emphasize that this is an estimate -- is of 600 people missing."
Maldonado chalks up the large number of missing to the non-responsiveness of the people in El Cambray, who, he says, did not listen to warnings to evacuate their town.
Rescue teams, which have been using dogs to get to the trapped people, have seen some success. Julia Barrera, a government spokesperson, said that rescuers have so far managed to save 26 people.
Julio Sanchez, a spokesman for the Guatemalan emergency services, says that the United States and Mexico have both reached out to offer assistance. As Guatemala has been following international protocols that suggest completing 72 hours of rescue work before calling on other nations to help, the government has asked the U.S. and Mexico to remain on standby.
Due to a combination of heavy rainfall, hurricanes and a crippling economy which compels people to make their homes in unsuitable areas, Guatemala is notoriously vulnerable to natural disasters.
With the death toll rising, Thursday’s disaster might be Guatemala’s worst since 2005 when around 1,400 villagers perished in a mudslide in Panabaj. The devastation was so total that the authorities actually abandoned efforts to retrieve the bodies and declared the area to be a mass grave.
Sergio Cabanas, a senior official at the National Coordination for Disaster Reduction, holds out hope of finding more survivors in El Cambray. According to The Guardian, he says, "We have enough hope to keep looking, even if just one more person gets out alive.”
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