PURULHA, Guatemala – Guatemalan search brigades were reportedly undone on Friday from the first bodies of a large landslide caused by rain in which at least one hundred other people were reportedly buried when the remnants of Hurricane Eta crossed the waters of the Caribbean, strengthening towards Cuba.
Governments have been running to count displaced and dead people, and bodies from landslides and floods caused by Eta, now a tropical depression, which has claimed dozens of lives from Mexico to Panama.
In southern Mexico, across the border with Guatemala, another 19 people died when heavy rains attributed to Eta caused landslides and floods of streams and rivers, according to Chiapas State Chief of Civil Defense Elas Morales Rodríguez.
The worst incident occurred in the mountainous municipality of Chenalhó, where ten other people were swept away by a rain-swept stream; their bodies were later discovered downstream. Mexico’s National Weather Service said that “the giant flow of Eta makes heavy rains torrential in the Yucatan Peninsula and southeastern Mexico.
In Guatemala, the army’s first brigade reached a large landslide on Friday morning in the central mountain range where some 150 houses were buried on Thursday, 3 bodies recovered, according to an army spokesman. At a press conference, President Alejandro Giammattei said the idea was in Guatemala. At least a hundred dead in San Cristobal Verapaz, however he noted that this is not yet confirmed.
“The landscape is confusing in this area,” he said, noting that rescuers were struggling at the site.
Tropical depression Eta concentrated 445 kilometers west-southwest of Grand Cayman, moved northeast at 19 km/h (12 mph) and had sustained maximum winds of 55 km/h (35 mph).
The arrival of Hurricane Eta on Tuesday afternoon in northeastern Nicaragua followed days of torrential rain as it crawled towards the coast. Their slow, winding path north through Honduras brought rivers to their shores and spread to neighborhoods where families were forced to climb the rooftops to wait. for relief.
Wendi Mungua Figueroa, 48, and relatives huddled Friday morning on the corrugated iron roof of their home in Honduras, surrounded by brown water, but with little drinking water.
“We can’t get off the roofs of our homes because the water reaches our necks in the street,” said Mungua, who controlled about two hours of sleep thursday night in intermittent rain and rainy cold.
He had still noticed lifeboats or authority, his neighbors also occupying their roofs.
His home in La Lima, a suburb of San Pedro Sula, is 50 metres from the Chamelecón River and just a few steps from the runway of the foreign airport. The community was flooded in 1998 by Hurricane Mitch, a typhoon that killed more than 9,000 people in Central America, but Mungia said there was more water this time.
It had been raining heavily since Monday, the center of Eta did not enter Honduras until Wednesday. Anticipating the flood, they had begun to lift appliances and other family items, but the water entered a torrent on Thursday morning.
“In 10 minutes, my space filled up,” he said. We couldn’t escape in any direction because there’s water everywhere. “
Francisco Argeal, leading meteorologist at the Center for Atmospheric, Oceanographic and Seismic Studies, who in the last two days had fallen to 20 centimeters of rain in some areas.
The death toll in Honduras rose to at least 21 on Friday, according to local authorities, however, the country’s emergency control firm reported eight.
“We know there are a lot of deaths, we’ve noticed them, however, until we get official information, we may not be able to certify them,” said Marvin Aparicio, head of the agency’s incident command system. hours, we will begin to see, to our regret, dantesque scenes of other discovered people dead “as the waters recede.
The government estimates that more than 1. 6 million have been affected, said bailouts were taking place in San Pedro Sula and La Lima on Friday, but that the wishes were wonderful and resources limited.
The U. S. State Department said on Friday that four U. S. helicopters from Soto Cano Air Force Base near Tegucigalpa had flown to San Pedro Sula to participate in rescue operations. Helicopters also attended in Panama, where the government showed five deaths in the western province of Chiriquí, which borders Costa Rica.
Observers are already predicting that the devastation caused by Eta will push more people to migrate from countries already among the leading migrant carriers on the U. S. border in recent years.
ETA is predicted to become a tropical typhoon defeated on Friday before arriving in the Cayman Islands on Saturday and crossing Cuba on Sunday. From there, you can succeed in Florida or eventually head to the US Gulf Coast. America, the long-term path remains uncertain.
“Anything that comes out of Central America is going to last a while,” said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. “I’m convinced we’re done with Eta. “
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Associated Press editors Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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