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Mudslide buries bus, dozens missing |
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15:03, July 06, 2007 |
Rescuers digging through mud and rocks have recovered at least 14 bodies from a bus buried on a rural road after a mountainside gave way, officials said yesterday.
Rescue workers held out little hope of survivors among the 40 to 60 passengers thought to be on the bus.
Hundreds of soldiers and rescue workers have been laboring since Wednesday afternoon in an effort to find survivors, said Mario Marin, governor of the central state of Puebla, where the landslide occurred.
Heavy rains triggered the slide Wednesday morning on a remote winding road near the town of Eloxochitlan.
Marin said at least 14 bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage, eight of which have been identified, and that officials were bringing coffins to the site. Among those unidentified was a woman still holding her baby in her arms, Marin said.
Puebla's chief of ambulance services, Salvador Bianchini, told the Televisa television network in a live interview from the site that workers had recovered at least 15 bodies after searching only a small front section of the bus.
"The search is very difficult," he said, adding officials were concerned that a nearby cliff with loose rocks and earth could come tumbling down at any moment.
Officials have declined to say whether they hoped to find survivors, but Bianchini indicated that they believed all of the passengers had died. He said the search would probably continue through yesterday or today.
Local news media reported that the bus was carrying more than 50 people from Eloxochitlan, an extremely poor town in central Mexico.
On Wednesday, weeping relatives of the bus riders and local residents crowded around barriers guarded by soldiers near the site of the landslide, which happened as the bus was headed to the nearby town of Tehuacan. Officials said it was impossible to know the exact number of passengers on board because the bus made stops along the way.
Eloxochitlan resident Donato Trujillo, who witnessed the landslide from his home and was on the scene helping rescue workers, said it was sudden and swift. "We heard the movement of the earth, a tremendous roar and people screaming," he told Televisa. "It was a direct, fatal blow."
President Felipe Calderon ordered the interior and defense departments to help in the rescue efforts.
Marin, who arrived at the site by helicopter, said no one was to blame for the tragedy.
"All the mountains are risky ... It's nature," Marin said.
Heavy rainfall across Mexico this week has triggered flooding and landslides that killed several people.
Fifty-seven people died last year when their overloaded bus careened off a highway into a 200-meter ravine in state of Veracruz, which borders Puebla.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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