Death in the Mud

When the residents of Montebello Poniente (pop 8,000) a suburb of San Salvador on the slopes of one of El Salvador s largest volcanoes, heard the rumblings shortly after dawn, they assumed that it was just another mild earthquake, the sort they had experienced many times before But then a boy ran down the town's main street knocking on doors and screaming: "The lava is coming, the lava is coming! He was wrong-- the long-dormant volcano had not erupted--but the neighbors who heeded Ms warning were wise. Within minutes, an 8-ft-high wave of water, mud, boulders and uprooted trees all but destroyed Montebello.

Houses were ripped from their foundations, and residents suffocated in their beds. Antoniel Garcia, a truck driver was awakened in time to pull his family to safety on the roof of his house. He watched as successive torrents swept cars, furniture and screaming townspeople into a nearby ravine "It will take months to find all the bodies," he said. By week's end estimates of the dead exceeded 300 in that region of the country.

The sudden wave was the result of two currents of floodwater joining forces on the side of the volcano just above the town, followed minutes later by the collapse of a temporary road-construction dam. The disaster, El Salvador's worst since a 1965 earthquake, followed four days of heavy rains that have devastated El Salvador and parts of Guatemala killing some 1,000 people. As much as 40% of El Salvador's basic food crops has been destroyed, and damage is estimated at $250 million.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.