Guatemala ends hunt for victims of slides

SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala — Authorities abandoned efforts Tuesday to recover bodies from a deadly landslide and turned to international agencies to help feed, clothe and treat the tens of thousands of residents who lost everything in a week of deadly rains and floods.

President Oscar Berger and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu arrived in this hard-hit town by helicopter to the cheers of hundreds of people who swarmed Santiago Atitlan's town square, a stone courtyard fronting a 17th-century church.

"We came to share the pain of all the people who lost loved ones," Berger said after hugging the town's mayor. "We are very worried about Santiago Atitlan, (but) I have the impression that we have never been as united."

Also Tuesday, Guatemalan officials raised the number of missing people to 577 from 384, while the death toll remained at 652. Another 133 people have died in El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras due to the heavy rains, partly spawned by Hurricane Stan.

Officials concerned about the possible outbreak of disease set up a perimeter around the site of a half-mile-wide and 15- to 20-foot-deep mudslide that buried the nearby community of Panabaj, about 85 miles west of Guatemala City.

Berger later hiked through the mudslide, which he said killed 400 people in Panabaj and another nearby hamlet. He said Panabaj would be abandoned forever, and land would be provided for villagers to relocate elsewhere.

Menchu called on local communities to preserve their culture and traditions, despite the loss of life and likely relocation. She also asked other Mayan communities to donate traditional clothing.

"Lake Atitlan is a mirror for many Mayan villages," she said.

Santiago Atitlan Mayor Diego Esquina said corpses were decomposing rapidly and the hillside under which they lay was still highly unstable, making further rescue efforts too risky. Residents had been digging for possible survivors with their hands and whatever tools they could find.

Berger later declared the area a high-risk zone.

Some 107,000 Guatemalans were staying in shelters after their homes were damaged or destroyed. Some outlying communities remained blocked from outside help, Guatemalan Agriculture Minister Alvaro Aguilar said.

Aguilar said the government had stored up about two months' worth of food for emergencies, but used an entire month's supply just last week. He estimated that the country will need at least 22,000 tons of food over the next three months.