Wondering Who’s at Fault in the Path of Destruction

With about a third of the nearly 700 deaths from last weekend’s strong earthquake occurring in one suburban neighborhood in the foothills of a deforested mountain, Salvadorans on Tuesday debated whether there was someone to blame for the tragedy and, if so, who.

Most of the death and damage was outside major cities, so questions often raised in a quake’s aftermath about urban building design and construction were replaced by wrangling over the possibility that faulty ecological practices exacerbated the natural disaster.

It is an argument that has repercussions far beyond Saturday’s disaster in this nation of 6 million people crowded into an area the size of Kern County.

Only 2% of El Salvador’s natural vegetation remains, ecologists say, making it the second-most-deforested nation in the Americas, after Haiti. Despite efforts to create national parks and reserves, the burgeoning population continues to encroach on nature, filling ravines with shacks and clearing the trees higher and higher up the slopes of El Salvador’s famous volcanoes.

Ecologists have consistently warned that such practices will have dire consequences in a country prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

By shaking loose a mountaintop onto a suburban neighborhood called Las Colinas, in the foothills of the Balsamo mountain range, the 7.6 quake appears to have given activists a cause celebre.

Throughout the weekend, volunteer rescuers and bereaved relatives digging through mounds of dirt in search of loved ones looked up toward the mountaintop that had dumped the rubble, cursing construction companies for the landslide.

Environmental activists threatened to sue contractors and the public officials who had allowed them to build so high up the steep mountains. Provoking even more anger, the houses being built at the top of the peak were mansions, while those destroyed in the foothills were townhouses of middle-class professionals.

Deforested regions were not the only ones that suffered severe damage. Ecology Minister Ana Maria Majano noted in a news conference Monday, “There are areas with little human activity and a lot of vegetation that also had landslides.”

Just around the bend from Nueva San Salvador, in an area where coffee bushes are more common than townhouses, witnesses said even larger mudslides than the one that devastated Las Colinas washed down the mountainside, carrying as many as a dozen coffee pickers. Mexican seismic teams found cracks 4 inches wide in parts of the mountain range, emergency officials said.

What determines the degree of damage, Majano said, is not construction, but whether the soil is loose or compacted and the characteristics of the earthquake itself. Precisely because of the unpredictability of quakes, ecologists argue, contractors should not be allowed to build in the hills.

“There are more than 20 companies up there causing problems,” said Ricardo Navarro, director of the environmental organization CESTA.

On Sunday, Nueva San Salvador Comptroller Jose Noe Torres had blamed the construction activity above Las Colinas on Posamaco, an abbreviation for Posada Magana, a company that the municipal officials had sued in an attempt to prevent construction on the hillsides. The court denied the petition.

Carlos Posada, president of the company, vehemently denied that his venture owned the construction project on the hill above Las Colinas.

“Our subdivision is on the other side of the mountain,” he said. Further, he noted, the courts had decided that his project, called Tierra Verde, is safe and that the municipality owed the company $4.5 million for delaying construction and libeling the corporation in public comments.

“These are the same tactics that lost them the lawsuit,” he said.

Navarro, who said he also publicly blamed the company over the weekend because of information he had received from local environmental activists, said Tuesday, “It is possible that it is not Posamaco.”

He said he planned an investigation to determine who is responsible for the disaster and will file a lawsuit if necessary.

“This is a collective responsibility of all the companies that are building up there,” Navarro said.