Mexico Struggles to Reach Victims as Flood Toll Rises

Soldiers and volunteers dug out dozens of corpses from hip-deep mud Friday and authorities ferried aid to stranded towns as Mexico began cleaning up from massive floods that have killed more than 250 people in a broad central swath of the country.

“I think, unfortunately, this could be the tragedy of the decade for Mexico in terms of loss of life,” President Ernesto Zedillo said after flying over the disaster area.

Dozens of people are still missing and the death toll “is increasing by the hour,” the president said. It was expected to leap further as officials reestablished communication with dozens of remote villages. More than 50,000 people huddled in temporary shelters Friday, many having lost their homes.

Five days of record-breaking rain caused rivers to jump their banks, sending shoulder-high water coursing through streets and tearing away chunks of homes in Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Tabasco and Oaxaca states. The downpour softened hillsides, creating rivers of muck that swept over neighborhoods.

The worst-affected city appeared to be Teziutlan, a quaint mountain community 110 miles east of Mexico City dominated by an 18th century church. Many inhabitants work in clothing maquiladoras, assembly plants that export items from name brands such as Guess? and Tommy Hilfiger to the United States.

In the city, a mudslide ripped an entire neighborhood from a hill, burying scores of people under flattened homes, rocks and dirt. According to Amadeo Andrade, the local head of public security, 72 people were confirmed dead and about 30 were missing.

“My town smells of death,” said an exhausted rescue worker, Vicente Montero, in an interview with Mexican television from Teziutlan.

Soldiers in fatigues and blue masks attacked the mud with shovels and pickaxes Friday. Volunteers dug with buckets and even their hands in the sea of mud, pocked with reminders of everyday life: a pair of blue jeans, a mattress, an orange plastic garbage can.

Authorities said that the landslide occurred late Tuesday but that aid did not arrive until Thursday night, when 1,400 soldiers flew in to assist local people desperately trying to find survivors.

“These neighborhoods were built up with landfill a long time ago. No one ever thought they were going to slide. But with the rainfall, the land became too soft,” Andrade said in a telephone interview.

In addition to the fatalities in Teziutlan, 130 people died in other parts of Puebla state, according to local authorities. Fifty-six were reported killed in Veracruz, seven in Oaxaca, three in Hidalgo and one in Tabasco.

With the rain abating, the military began evacuating people from stranded communities Friday and dispatching helicopters loaded with food, water and medicine. The relief effort has been severely hampered because the rain swept away dozens of bridges and caused mudslides that blocked roads. At least 450,000 people were still without electricity Friday.

“Some areas can only be reached by air, or by going on horseback or on foot, as the army has done,” Puebla Gov. Melquiades Morales said in a radio interview.

Aid began to pour in from the government, relief groups and private citizens to emergency centers set up throughout the disaster area. But supplying all the communities where homes were destroyed and wells flooded appeared daunting.

“We are going to have to bring in literally thousands, maybe millions, of liters of bottled water,” Zedillo said late Friday in the Veracruz town of Gutierrez Zamora, which was cut off to road traffic. He acknowledged that the town did not have enough water for the population.

Local officials sent out radio appeals for aid and, in a few cases, used the Internet to call for bottled water, battery-powered lamps, diapers and medicine.

But complaints mounted that relief supplies were arriving too slowly.

“The People Call For Aid, But It Doesn’t Come,” was the headline Friday in the Mexico City daily Reforma.

Authorities blamed the poor weather in the past week and the widespread road destruction for the delays.

Israel Hernandez, a telephone operator in the town of Pantepec, in northern Puebla state, said he was concerned that supplies were dwindling and access roads to the town were blocked.

“For now there’s food, but it’s going to run out soon. We are worried because they say it’s going to continue to rain,” he said.

At least, though, his town was spared the worst of the flooding. The nearby hamlet of Mixum was virtually wiped out when part of a mountain collapsed on top of it, burying a school. Fifteen students and two teachers were killed, according to state authorities. Earlier reports had put the death toll there much higher.

“Pieces of the mountain fell off in slabs, diagonally, like slices of a cake,” said Luis Francisco Diaz, undersecretary of government in Pantepec. “The witnesses say that when the earth fell it sounded like a thunderclap, and there was smoke.”

The heavy rain was caused by a tropical depression or small tropical storm parked for several days in the Gulf of Mexico, said Jaime Albarran of Mexico’s National Meteorological Service.

Unlike last year, when storms lashed Chiapas, killing hundreds, “these current rains were generated by a small [weather] system, without any hurricane. That’s what’s impressive,” he said.

There was no heavy rain Friday, but officials warned that further mudslides and flooding could occur if rain continues as predicted in some parts of southern Mexico in coming days.

Jose Diaz Briseno in The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.