Central America reeled on Tuesday after the first eastern Pacific tropical storm of the season, Agatha, hammered the region with heavy rains that killed 179 people and washed away thousands of homes.
Hardest hit was Guatemala, with 152 people killed, dozens injured and at least 100 people missing after floods and mudslides swept away ramshackle homes along hills and destroyed bridges and roads, complicating rescue efforts.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom released a photograph of a sinkhole in the capital that had swallowed up an entire three-story building.
PHOTO: REUTERS
In countries on the mountainous and mostly poor isthmus linking North and South America, the poorest people often build their homes near rivers so they have access to water.
But in in the rainy season their homes are endangered by swollen rivers and mudslides.
Tropical Storm Agatha, which dumped heavy rain on the isthmus just ahead of Tuesday’s first day of the Atlantic hurricane season, destroyed up to 22,000 homes in Guatemala, forcing 155,000 people from their homes, officials said.
About half of those affected were staying in shelters, officials said.
The storm killed 17 people in Honduras and 10 in El Salvador, official figures showed.
With millions of dollars in damage and the impoverished population particularly hard hit, the US pledged US$112,500 and sent a plane carrying relief supplies on Tuesday; the EU pledged US$3.6 million in humanitarian aid.
Colom said he would ask Washington to grant Guatemalan migrants in the US temporary protected status that would allow them to stay and work without fear of deportation because of the conditions in Guatemala.
Salvadorans and Hondurans living in the US already have that special status.
“It’s something we sought a while ago but now the timing is favorable with this natural disaster,” Guatemala’s deputy foreign minister Miguel Angel Ibarra said.
A US airplane carrying four helicopters and supplies was scheduled to arrive in Guatemala City from its base in Honduras to help deliver emergency aid to the Guatemalan Air Force, at Colom’s request.
Guatemala City’s response was hampered by a separate emergency: the eruption of nearby Pacaya volcano, whose ash has closed the capital’s Aurora international airport since last week, when two people were also killed and three went missing. That left thousands of travelers stranded.
The World Bank said it was finalizing with Guatemala an US$85 million loan to help it cope with the two disasters.
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