Guatemala City: Landslides in Central America have killed at least 180 people, while a vast hole, in Guatemala City, caused by the storm, has swallowed a clothing factory.
Thousands remain homeless and dozens are still missing following the season's first tropical storm — Agatha. Rescue crews, yesterday, struggled to reach isolated communities to distribute food while citizens used hoes and pick axes to search for victims amidst the wreckage.
"This is a total tragedy," said Jose Vicente Samayoa, president of a neighbourhood group in Amatitlan, a flooded town south of Guatemala's capital.
Officials in Guatemala have so far reported 152 dead, but say 100 people are still missing.
In the department of Chimaltenango, a province west of Guatemala City, landslides wiped out a number of rural Indian communities and killed at least 60 people.
In El Salvador, 11,000 people were evacuated. The death toll yesterday rose to 10 and two people were missing, according to President Mauricio Funes. About 95 per cent of the country's roads have been affected.
Transportation Minister Gerson Martinez said 179 bridges had been wrecked.
Agatha made landfall near the Guatemala-Mexico border on Saturday with tropical storm winds of up to 75 kilometres an hour.
It dissipated the following day over the mountains of western Guatemala.
The rising death toll is reminding nervous residents of Hurricane Mitch, which hovered over Central America for days in 1998, causing flooding and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing and unaccounted for.
