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Hopes Fade Amid Death And Dust In El Salvador
SANTA TECLA, El Salvador (News Agencies) - In a field of death and dust that was once a pleasant, tree-lined neighborhood, the mood was somber Monday, as rescuers retrieved yet more grotesquely disfigured bodies.
Hundreds of international teams battled the relentless heat, the lung-choking dust and the stench that left little doubt hundreds of bodies remained buried under a landslide triggered by Saturday's quake.
Las Colinas, a middle-class neighborhood of Santa Tecla, just outside the capital, has become a symbol of the devastation Saturday's earthquake wrought on El Salvador, a tiny, impoverished Central American nation.
Virtually all of the 500 deaths reported since Saturday occurred here, when a mountainside came crashing down, burying hundreds of houses, and leaving residents no time to flee the landslide.
At an outdoor improvised morgue, bloated bodies lay putrefying in the sun.
"If we get a head or a body, we keep it for two to three hours so relatives can identify it; if we get body parts, we send the for burial immediately," said Mario Colorado of the coroner's office in Santa Tecla.
"The only survivors are those who were not there at the time," said Carlos Dubon, 41, who lost a nephew in the disaster. The other four relatives who lived with him, or next door with his sister, were out when the killer quake struck.
But his house and his belongings are history.
As he stood on a mound of earth above what was once his home, directing rescue teams to the spot where his nephew's body should stand, he showed no interest in retrieving the pictures, clothing and other fragments of his past pulled from the rubble.
"We have lost many friends, neighbors, and everything we had," he said.
One neighbor, Gladys Cristina Rivas was among the very few who managed to flee the disaster.
She was walking home shortly before noon Saturday as she felt the quake and saw the mountain opening up. She promptly ran away, just managing to stay ahead of the torrent of mud. Her young daughter was not so lucky: the upper half of her body was found amid the devastation.
Many of the bodies that arrived at the makeshift morgue were badly mutilated by the heavy machinery used to remove the tons of earth and rubble that buried Las Colinas, where medical officials said they had counted 270 dead.
Weeping relatives milled around, waiting for news of their loved ones. Some residents camped out on the pavement, on mattresses, blankets, or whatever they could retrieve from their shattered houses.
Numerous aftershocks further jangled nerves.
Sandra Moreno, a 21-year-old with a two-year-old son in her arms, could not hold back tears as she recalled how she lost her mother and aunt, buried in a mudslide triggered by the quake.
Spanish firefighters used sniffer dogs to search for survivors. Their spirits lifted as a dog started sniffing a small tunnel they had dug into a house, but dampened again as the dog gave up interest.
Nearby, Mexican soldiers used shovels and buckets to dig into a home, where two people were trapped. "It is very unlikely we will find anyone alive," said Sergeant Carlos Hernandez.
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