El Salvador digs out after floods, mudslides kill 134

VERAPAZ, EL SALVADOR -- Soldiers and townspeople dug through rock and debris Monday in hopes of finding dozens of people missing in a mudslide that swept down on a town, part of a wave of floods and landslides that killed at least 134 people in El Salvador.

Days of heavy rains loosened mud and boulders that rolled down the slopes of the Chichontepec volcano before dawn Sunday, burying homes and cars in Verapaz, a town of about 7,000 people 30 miles outside the capital, San Salvador.

Hurricane Ida's presence in the western Caribbean late last week may have played a role in drawing the rain-packed, Pacific low-pressure system toward El Salvador on the other side of Central America, said Dave Roberts, a U.S. Navy hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

President Mauricio Funes toured Verapaz on Monday morning, stopping to talk to men shoveling more than three feet of mud from their homes.

"The images speak clearly," Funes told reporters. "This is a disaster." He urged El Salvador's congress to approve millions of dollars in loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, saying some funds would be used for reconstruction.

Soldiers, emergency workers and relatives resumed a search for the missing at daybreak Monday. Military helicopters flew in food for the searchers.

Cruz Ayala described the slide as "something black, like a huge wave, a huge noise, and I heard screams of people asking for help." She fled and climbed the roof of a neighbor's house without knowing whether her 71-year-old mother and two teenage nieces escaped. She found their bodies in the rubble.

Mayor José Antonio Hernández said rescuers found six more bodies in Verapaz, raising the town's death toll to 16, with 47 confirmed missing. Nationwide, the death toll stood at 134, Funes told reporters.

With no place to put the bodies in Verapaz, many of the dead were taken to nearby towns until families could claim them.

In the town of San Isidro, eight coffins were lined up in a church, which also served as a shelter for about 200 people whose homes were damaged.

Amid a persistent drizzle, rescuers dug frantically for survivors with shovels and even bare hands. But the search was made difficult by collapsed walls, boulders and downed power lines that blocked heavy machinery.

Mario Montoya said his sister, who was eight months pregnant, was among the dead.

"A torrent of water grew and great boulders started to destroy homes," said Montoya, 29. "It was terrible."

-- Associated Press