Search Ends For Mexico Landslide Survivors
Rescuers called off their search Friday after pulling 32 bodies from a Mexican passenger bus buried when a rain-soaked mountainside gave way.
Officials initially speculated as many as 60 people were aboard the bus when it was engulfed by tons of rock and earth as it traveled on a twisting rural road early Wednesday.
After two solid days of digging, workers using heavy machinery pulled the mangled remains of the vehicle from the ground near the impoverished town of Eloxochitlan in Puebla state. They then sent in sniffer dogs to search for more bodies, but found none.
"The specialists tell us there is nothing more to recover, that it's done," Puebla Interior Secretary Javier Lopez told the Televisa network on Friday.
Lopez said Gov. Mario Marin had ordered officials to go house to house in Eloxochitlan to ask residents if they were missing any family members. Local news media reported that most of the bus passengers were from Eloxochitlan.
Officials said it was impossible to know the exact number of passengers on board at the time of the avalanche because the bus made numerous stops along its route.
"We have 32 people. Nineteen men, nine women, three little girls, and one little boy. A total of 32 victims," said Blanca Laura Villeda, the State of Puebla Justice Attorney.
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. Elozochitlan is an extremely poor town in central Mexico.
"I lost a son of mine," said one man. "It's not enough to fight narco-trafficking. Poverty, it's in every corner of the country. To (President) Felipe Calderon, don't feel proud that you are fighting drug trafficking. That's not enough."
Puebla government spokesman Ismael Rios said the landslide brought down at least 100 tons of earth and rock piled 130 feet high.
Eloxochitlan resident Donato Trujillo, who was helping rescue workers, saw the landslide from his home.
"We heard the movement of the earth, a tremendous roar and people screaming," he told Televisa. "It was a direct, fatal blow."
Heavy rainfall elsewhere in Mexico this week has triggered flooding and landslides that killed several people.