Mexico looks for landslide victims, chopper
21 Sep Arabnews
Mexican soldiers dug through tons of mud and dirt Friday in the
continuing search for landslide victims, as authorities looked for a
federal police helicopter that went missing while carrying out relief
operations on the flood-stricken Pacific coast.
An army captain who was not authorized to be quoted by name said
military and civilian authorities are still looking for the chopper, a
day after it was reported missing. The officer had no further
information on how many people were aboard the craft, or where it was
when it was last heard from.Search efforts continued in the remote
mountain village of La Pintada, north of Acapulco, where 68 people were
reported missing following Monday’s landslide. Two bodies have been
recovered.
Federal police have been helping move emergency supplies and aid
victims of massive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Manuel.Survivors of
the landslide at a shelter in Acapulco recounted that Monday was a
holiday, and rain fell all day because of the tropical storm off the
coast, so far more people than usual stayed home, napping under warm
blankets or cooking for the Independence Day celebration in La Pintada’s
little cobblestone square.Suddenly, the earth trembled, and a tidal wave
of dirt, rocks and trees exploded off the hill above the village,
sweeping through the center of town, burying families in their homes and
sweeping wooden houses into the bed of the swollen river that winds past
La Pintada on its way to the Pacific. “Everyone who could ran into the
coffee fields.
It smothered the homes and sent them into the river. Half the homes
in town were smothered and buried,” said Marta Alvarez, a 22-year-old
homemaker who was cooking with her 2-year-old son, two brothers and her
parents when the landslide erupted. La Pintada was the scene of the
single greatest tragedy in the twin paths of destruction wreaked by
Manuel and Hurricane Ingrid, which simultaneously pounded both of
Mexico’s coasts over the weekend, spawning huge floods and landslides
across hundreds of miles of coastal and inland areas.
Manuel later gained hurricane force and rolled into the northern
state of Sinaloa on Thursday morning before weakening over land. |