Recovery of Bodies in Peru Mudslide Slowed by Rains

Heavy rains slowed the grisly task of pulling bodies from mud and rocks Thursday amid dwindling hopes of finding more survivors of an Andean mudslide that killed as many as 300 villagers.

Rescuers used picks, spades and their hands until another slide forced them to stop working about midday.

Civil Defense officials, who said 43 bodies had been recovered, said many of the dead were likely to remain entombed forever as the 30-foot-deep mud was expected to harden before they could be located.

Tuesday’s early morning mudslide buried the villages of Ccocha and Pumaranra in a remote, mountainous region of southeastern Peru.

As survivors awaited the arrival of food and medicine, officials feared the rain might endanger scores of workers at the base of the slide.

Authorities tried to persuade hundreds of villagers from three nearby communities to move Thursday, but the people of Kerapata, closest to the disaster site, refused to leave their animals.

In the nearby village of Tamburco, relatives of the dead waited in lines in the rain to enter a makeshift morgue in a schoolhouse.

Dina Rivas Tapia stared up the hill from Kerapata’s town square to the landslide, handkerchief in hand.

“My entire family has disappeared. They were 25 people. I have no house, no money. I don’t even have a bed.”