Makeshift Homes Swept Away : Heavy Rains, Flooding Add to Salvador Quake Victims’ Woes

Floods and driving rain Tuesday added to the misery of the 200,000 homeless people who have been living in the streets of San Salvador since an earthquake rocked the city Oct. 10.

Makeshift homes were destroyed when the Acelhuate River, which runs through the Salvadoran capital, rose by at least 15 feet Monday night, residents said. The flooding eroded the sides of ravines, where many temporary houses were built. Other landslides blocked roads, including the main Comalapa highway, and part of a bridge was washed away.

Some outdoor hospitals set up after the earthquake were also flooded.

“It was as if a second earthquake had hit us,” said Antonio Castillo, a doctor.

The Salvadoran Red Cross said it has no reports of new casualties.

The earthquake killed at least 1,000 people and has severely strained the resources of a country already in the midst of civil war. President Jose Napoleon Duarte has called for massive international aid to reconstruct the capital.

The areas worst hit by the flooding were those alongside the river, where thousands of people left destitute by the quake have erected flimsy shelters of wood, tin and plastic sheeting.

The waters had subsided by mid-morning Tuesday, but debris littered the streets.

“I lost everything,” said Dolores Nove Melendes, a 41-year-old council worker in the Morales district.

He said the water swept waist deep through the shack he had built after the quake destroyed his house.

“It is the will of God,” he said.

In the Gallego district, Maria Palcios Morales told how she had grabbed her two small children and fled to higher ground when the river burst its banks early Tuesday morning.

“It’s no good staying here, but we have nowhere else to go,” she said. She has no husband or job and is relying on neighbors for food, she added.

At the field hospital set up by Bloom Hospital, which collapsed during the earthquake, Castillo said many tents were brought down by the rain. No new patients were being accepted Tuesday, he said.

Tents also fell at the maternity hospital’s temporary facilities, exposing patients to the driving rain.

Those who still had homes were without electricity in some areas.