Survivors of Storm in Nicaragua Emerge to a Vision of 'Hell'
By Molly Moore Washington Post Service
LEON, Nicaragua - After the wall of muck roared down the slope of the dormant Casitas volcano, burying her family's village and
most of the people in it, Rosa Maria Hurtado embarked on a tormented search for relatives that she described as a trek through hell.
''I saw tens of people walking nude out of the mud, crying and telling horror stories of how many others had died,'' Mrs. Hurtado, 38,
said between sobs in a telephone interview from a hospital near this northwestern Nicaraguan town. ''Most of them were bleeding
and all bruised. I saw pieces of bodies in the mud. I saw a headless body of a child. They rescued a few people alive, but most of
them were dead bodies.''
Her brother survived by clinging to a piece of roof anchored in the mud until a rescue helicopter arrived. But 13 of her 20 relatives
who resided near the volcano are dead, said Mrs. Hurtado, who had recently moved from the buried village to nearby Chinandega.
Six days after the hurricane designated Mitch and its remnants dumped 50 inches (127 centimeters) of rain on Central America, the
death toll in the region is estimated at 9,000, about 7,000 in Honduras and 1,800 to 2,400 in Nicaragua. About 13,000 people are
still reported missing in Honduras and Nicaragua in the aftermath of one of the most deadly natural disasters to strike the region this
century. An estimated 1 million people have been left homeless, according to government officials and aid organizations.
Relief efforts have been thwarted by a shortage of helicopters. The Nicaraguan Air Force only has seven aging Soviet choppers. The
United States has diverted five helicopters from its U.S. Southern Command in Panama, and Mexico has donated two choppers to
the relief efforts.
''People are still out there, buried up to their chests, screaming for help,'' said Jairo Javier Perez, a Red Cross worker.
On Tuesday, President Arnoldo Aleman of Nicaragua led a convoy of all-terrain vehicles through the waterlogged northwestern region
of Nicaragua, which has been cut off from the rest of the country. Raging torrents have leapt every riverbank in the region, gobbling
bridges, uprooting giant trees as though they were matchsticks, and flattening houses and crops.
But even the president's convoy, which was attacked by angry residents at two stops and became stuck while trying to ford a river,
could not reach the stricken area at the base of the Casitas volcano. ''We don't want inspections,'' screamed an irate woman who
joined a rowdy mob that surrounded the president's vehicle at a river crossing. ''There are women and children dying here!''
But complaints about the government's slow response to the crisis were repeated by numerous people interviewed along the rural
roadsides as well as in the makeshift refugee camps that have mushroomed in Managua, the capital, this week.
''People are without water - they don't have anything,'' said Elena Benavidas, 35, who was attempting to make her way from the
capital where she works to her home villages with boxes of clothes, sacks of rice and jugs of water. ''They're dying of hunger. Some
haven't eaten in days.'' iht.com
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