Cleanup Slow After Mexico Floods

Trudging through mud-caked streets, public officials on Wednesday began tallying the damage wrought by devastating floods as frustrated residents waited impatiently to rebuild destroyed homes and replace lost possessions.

A group of 60 government employees and volunteers toured the damage-stricken areas, recording names and addresses to guide them later in distributing aid.

But residents were becoming increasingly impatient as they sought help putting their lives back together in Piedras Negras, a city of 200,000 in northern Coahuila state about 150 miles southwest of San Antonio, Texas.

Maria Elena Cuevas, whose house on the banks of the flooded Escondido River was left uninhabitable, first went to city hall, where officials directed her back to one of the temporary shelters housing 2,000 people. Authorities there told her it might be best to go back to her house to wait for a visit from officials.

Cuevas was told to bring along her 73-year-old mother who recently had surgery, "but she can barely walk," Cuevas said.

State authorities asked residents to have patience and remain calm as officials tried to dig out from under one of the worst floods in history to hit the U.S.-Mexico border region.

"We are barely out of the emergency state," said Coahuila development secretary Horacio del Bosque. Del Bosque said he expects a census of the damages to be completed next week.

"To everyone, we ask for your patience," Gov. Enrique Martinez said at one of two daily briefings he promised to hold each day. "There will most likely be months of work ahead."

Josefina Garcia Ortiz, a 29-year-old mother of five who was holed up in one of the shelters, tried to heed the governor's plea but was worried what she would do after finding only one wall of her house standing beside the river.

"I'm really tired," she said. "I know that things are not going to happen right away, but what we want to know is when."

Heavy rain clouds dispersed and skies cleared Wednesday as residents searched for salvageable belongings. Bulldozers rumbled through the streets and soldiers and city employees tossed debris into garbage trucks, doing their best to pick through the rubble of toppled cars, demolished buildings and smashed furniture.

Torrential rain beginning Sunday night caused the Escondido River to overflow, triggering flash flooding that killed 33 people and damaged 600 homes, 150 which were completely destroyed. More than a dozen people remained missing Wednesday.

A city spokeswoman earlier put the death toll at 34, but Piedras Negras Mayor Claudio Bres said Wednesday the official number was 33. He did not explain the discrepancy.

The federal government promised an initial allocation of more than US$3 million to rebuild damaged homes and replace lost belongings, federal Social Development Secretary Josefina Vazquez announced Tuesday, after touring the washed-out area.

"Some of the houses should be relocated," Vazquez told W Radio on Wednesday morning. "They can't go back to constructing on the river's edge, because it is a very high-risk zone."

By Olga R. Rodriguez