Six months after Guatemalan mudslide, families still in tarp camps

Published: 2006-03-21

PANABAJ, Guatemala (CNS) -- Debora Rutilia, 11, cannot forget the rainy morning of Oct. 5, when her parents woke her and her four siblings in the dark, led the family out of their house at the foot of the Toliman volcano, and told them to run for their lives amid a thundering river of mud and trees that came rushing down the mountain. Nearly six months after the Rutilias' village of Panabaj was all but obliterated in a massive mudslide born of three days of pounding rain, the remnants of Hurricane Stan, Debora and her family are among the survivors who still live in a refugee camp a short distance away. As many as a quarter of the 4,000 people who formerly lived in Panabaj are believed to have died in the mudslide that buried much of the town in up to 40 feet of dirt and debris. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, Hurricane Stan is officially responsible for the deaths of about 670 people and affected more than 470,000 in the country of 12 million.

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