Mexico Rushes Aid to Chiapas Flood Victims

Authorities set up shelters and rushed aid to Mexico’s flood-stricken Chiapas state Thursday, but many poor communities were cut off by churning waters, leaving thousands of survivors wet, sick and increasingly hungry.

Fierce storms have battered this nation for a week, with the worst damage in Chiapas. Various government spokesmen in the state put the death toll there at 28 to 40 people, with about 50 missing. But the Rev. Guillermo Nieto, head of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas in the southern city of Tapachula, said he had reports of 100 dead--and expected the figure to increase.

“There are communities that were swept away by the river,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’ve disappeared.”

In addition to the toll in Chiapas, storms in recent days have killed 28 people elsewhere in Mexico, according to officials and media reports.

The rains that have sent rivers cascading over their banks in Chiapas tapered off Thursday, allowing some relief work to begin. But weather forecasters predicted that the area is in for more downpours in the days ahead.

President Ernesto Zedillo, who flew over the Chiapas disaster area Thursday, said the government had sufficient aid to help the estimated 30,000 affected by the flooding there. However, authorities couldn’t reach communities cut off when raging rivers swept away bridges and roads.

“The problem isn’t that we lack water or food. The problem is how to get them to the people,” Zedillo told reporters. “The only way we’ll be able to do it for several days is by helicopter. So I have ordered the biggest possible concentration of helicopters” in the area.

Television footage showed villagers wading through swirling waist-high water, carrying toddlers, blankets or even pieces of furniture. In other areas, local people strung ropes over torrents and pulled themselves across, carrying food for hungry, trapped survivors.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. One neighborhood called Chamizal has been totally destroyed. Lots of poor people have lost everything,” said Leticia Arrazola Reyes, 68, the telephone operator in Huixtla, one of the villages near the Guatemalan border severely damaged by the floods.

“People are trying to find others, relatives, but they can’t find them. I want to cry. . . . People say they’ve seen dead people floating with the currents.”

Nieto, the aid worker, said many survivors who had lost homes retreated to higher areas of their towns, where they were receiving help from other local people.

“But the food is running out,” he said, noting that trucks with fresh supplies were unable to reach the areas. “We’re going to have a panic. There won’t be anything to eat--not just for the flood victims but in the cities.”

Even in Tapachula--which, with a population of about 250,000, is the major city in the flood area--gasoline was running out, Nieto said. The city, about 10 miles from the border with Guatemala, was cut off from the rest of Mexico except by air, he said.

Flooding deaths also were reported in the states of Guanajuato, Sinaloa, Veracruz, Jalisco and Oaxaca.

National television stations appealed for donations of food, water and clothing for the flood victims. The Mexican air force flew in two planeloads of bottled water Wednesday and was transporting more on Thursday, said a state government spokesman in Chiapas.

Hundreds of soldiers joined brigades of local people trying to move food to victims.

The storms in Chiapas were mainly the result of a mass of tropical air that settled over the state, causing downpours, meteorologists said.