Rescue workers on Tuesday tried to reach survivors of floods and landslides unleashed by late-season storms, as common graves were dug around the country to handle the growing death toll that now stands at 152.
“Why did God take you before me,” sobbed Catarino Arevalo, looking down at the coffin bearing his five-year-old daughter Besy.
Two other daughters are still missing after the rains hit, and his wife Ana is hospitalized while recovering from injuries.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Another five unidentified bodies in black plastic bags were waiting along with Besy for burial in a common grave in Verapaz, in eastern San Vicente department — epicenter for the crisis.
The common grave was dug in the town’s only cemetery, which already houses scores of victims from a 2001 earthquake.
The mayor of the San Vicente capital said 500 people were still missing on the outskirts of his city, though civil defense officials called the claim “speculation.”
“We have 500 missing people, more or less, according to the information people have given us, so that is not official but that is where the information we have gathered is, more or less,” Mayor Medadro Hernandez Lara told reporters.
The total number of dead rose to 152, civil protection authorities said after landslides and overflowing rivers swept away homes, while a raging torrent ripped through part of Verapaz.
Rescue efforts focused on San Vicente department, where 72 people were still missing after three days of driving rain, 60 of them in Verapaz alone, officials said.
Civil protection chief Jorge Melendez said: “The situation remains grave. We need to open up access routes into about 37 towns that at the moment are totally covered with tonnes of earth, rocks and trees.”
The number seeking emergency shelter dropped slightly to 12,930, a civil protection official said, while 1,800 homes were damaged or destroyed and 18 bridges and many roads were washed away by the floods.
The devastation was initially blamed on Hurricane Ida, which did not hit the country of about 7 million people directly but brought heavy rain that affected the entire region.
Meteorologists on Tuesday said Ida was not solely to blame. As Ida was slamming Nicaragua and Honduras “there was another system coming from the eastern Pacific” spreading “very heavy rains over western El Salvador,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman with the US National Hurricane Center.
“Hurricane Ida was not directly responsible for the grave situation in El Salvador,” Feltgen said.
El Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes visited Verapaz, where he said: “This time, the government will not leave the people alone.”
He has requested the national assembly reallocate US$150 million from an international loan of US$300 million designed for anti-crisis measures.
The National Assembly has declared a “public catastrophe and national disaster” and announced three days of national mourning for the flood victims.
Rescue crews from Venezuela arrived in Verapaz on Tuesday to evaluate the damage and help in the reconstruction effort, as financial and material aid poured into El Salvador from around the world.
The UN World Food Program said that over the next few days around 10,000 people in El Salvador would need emergency food assistance.
Ida, now weakened to a tropical depression, made landfall in Alabama early on Tuesday, lashing the southeastern US from Louisiana to Florida with wind and rain.
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
An American man identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine last year while fighting under contract for the Russian military, an investigation by independent Russian media said. Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on April 4 last year in “Eastern Europe,” an obituary published by his family said. He was the son of Juliane Gallina, who was appointed the deputy director for digital innovation at the CIA in February last year. The story of how the son of a top-ranking US spy died fighting for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of
RSS