Rescue Teams Seek Victims of Puerto Rico Avalanche

National Guardsmen and volunteers dug through tons of mud and shattered houses Tuesday, searching for victims of the devastating landslide that tore through the hillside slum of Mameyes on Monday, as officials warned that hundreds of residents may have been buried alive.

“We are expecting more than 500 dead,” said Pedro Gonzalez Ortiz, director of civil defense for Ponce.

Col. William Navis, chief operations officer for the Puerto Rican National Guard, gave a more conservative estimate of 200 to 300 dead.

Gonzalez Ortiz said he and other civil defense officials inspected the soil of Mameyes on Sunday, the day before the disaster, and saw no reason for alarm despite heavy rain. Asked if he thought then that a landslide was possible, he said, “No, never, never.”

Conflicting Reports

There was confusion at the disaster site Tuesday afternoon over the number of bodies recovered so far.

Gonzalez Ortiz said the civil defense count was 29 bodies since the disaster early Monday. Col. Navis put the number at 20, and another national guard officer, Col. Gilberto Moreno, said it was 40.

Moreno, the Puerto Rican guard’s public affairs officer, said the search for bodies was necessarily slow and painstaking because workers could use only hand equipment to pick through the huge mounds of earth, rock and rubble.

“We don’t have enough space to bring in heavy equipment,” he said.

Heavy Rains Blamed

Moreno said unusually heavy rains over the weekend were to blame for the collapse of the hillside.

“I think it was really saturated and just fell apart,” he said, pointing to a newly cut escarpment near the crest of the hill. “The hill was just cut apart there.”

Officials said 200 to 300 wood and tin houses were destroyed in the landslide, many buried completely in massive piles of soft yellow sandstone and brown mud.

“I think there are entire families that were crushed,” said Dr. Efrain Ortiz Savala, the Ponce municipal medical director.

Left Jagged Scar

The landslide left a jagged scar about half a mile wide across the southern face of the domed hill, once covered with ramshackle houses and tropical vegetation.

After two days of rain, the steep hillside began to give way before dawn Monday. The landslide woke up Victorio Reyes, 74, at about 4 a.m.

Reyes, among dozens of Mameyes residents taking refuge in a Ponce school Tuesday, had a black eye and a bruised forehead.

“My house shook and broke apart, and a piece of wood hit me in the face,” said Reyes. “I got out because the floor split open and I escaped through the hole.”

Reyes said two of his sons also got out alive, but his 35-year-old-wife, two other sons and an infant daughter were killed.

Survivors’ Stories

Reyes was lined up at the school for a supper of macaroni and hot dogs. Farther up the line was Santos Vega, 29, whose house collapsed while he and his wife lay in bed.

“We gave ourselves up for dead, but when we opened our eyes, there was the metal roof just above us,” Vega said. “I guess the concrete slabs of the foundation kept it from falling on us.”

As they fled their house, the couple saw the earth around them moving wildly, Vega said.

“From the hill, the houses broke away this way and that, as if they were flying,” he said. “The ground went up and down--it was an incredible thing.”

Eusebio Ribera, 76, said he jumped out through a window when his house began to break apart. Later, when he went back, his and his neighbors’ houses were gone.

House ‘Covered Over’

“They all ended up under the ground,” said Ribera, a widower who lived alone. “You can’t see mine. But there it is, covered over, everything I had.”

Tuesday, under a wilting Caribbean sun, groups of curious people climbed through the rubble, stopping to gawk at the devastation or to watch workers pry and pick at the ruins, looking for bodies.

“Is there another one in there?” asked a bystander while a volunteer shoveled debris from under a house that was tilted at a precarious angle.

One flimsy frame home rested atop a blue sedan with a crushed roof. Another house, jutting out over a newly formed gulch, appeared ready to topple.

Scattered Debris

Spread over several acres were sections of corrugated roofing metal, clapboard walls, broken beams, furniture, wire fencing and other remains of the poor neighborhood. Elsewhere were mounds of drying dirt and rock.

Santiago Perez Velez, standing in front of his yellow house on the edge of the destruction, pointed to a ridge of loose ground 20 yards away.

“Look down there,” he said. “There was a house there.”