30,000 in Mexico Seek Refuge From Floods

MEXICO CITY — At least 30,000 people sought refuge in emergency shelters Sunday from Mexico’s worst flooding in half a century as the state of Chiapas began cleaning up after a week of deadly, torrential rain.

Mario Fuentes Alcala, head of the government’s family support agency, said 30,000 people were at 100 shelters in communities hardest hit by storms and flooding, blamed for more than 100 deaths on the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state.

“Though we are making great efforts, the help remains insufficient if you consider that nearly 500,000 people have been affected or cut off by the floods,” Fuentes told the government news agency Notimex.

President Ernesto Zedillo toured the devastated region about 125 miles northwest of the Guatemalan border Saturday, while a fleet of 74 helicopters ferried supplies to Mexicans marooned by mud and flood damage.

Zedillo said the disaster was the worst catastrophe to hit Mexico since a series of earthquakes in 1985 killed thousands of people in Mexico City.

Newspapers reported Sunday that Chiapas Gov. Roberto Albores Guillen warned that it would “take months, even years” to clean up the mess left by raging rivers, which swept away neighborhoods and ripped apart roads and railways.

Health officials feared outbreaks of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease.