GUATEMALA CITY (AFP) – Two children and four adults were found dead on Monday after a river swollen by heavy rains swept away shacks built on its banks in the Guatemalan capital, authorities said.
Thirteen people, including eight children, were still missing after the river tore through the Dios es Fiel informal settlement in the early morning hours, according to the Conred disaster relief agency. Hundreds of firemen, police, soldiers, and volunteers were taking part in the rescue efforts.
The Naranjo river washed away six homes, built mainly of zinc sheets, under a bridge in the centre of Guatemala City, Conred spokesman Rodolfo Garcia told reporters.
Hundreds of needy residents of the capital constructed their homes on the banks of the river despite a municipal prohibition due to it containing residential wastewater from the capital’s sewage system.
Water bearing stones, soil and human waste gushed through the settlement following heavy rains on Sunday, leaving mainly just debris in its wake, an AFP reporter observed.
Resident Esau Gonzalez, a 42-year-old day worker, recalled how “the river… took homes, neighbours’ belongings. Neighbours disappeared”.
Gonzalez told AFP the community had nowhere else to go.
“Rent is very high. Salaries are not enough to pay rent with,” he said.
Tens of thousands of Guatemala’s 17.7 million inhabitants depend on precarious housing in often hazardous environments in a country with a 59-per-cent poverty rate.
The rainy season, which runs from May to November, has this year claimed 29 lives so far, affected some 2.1 million people of whom more than 10,000 lost their homes, and destroyed four roads and nine bridges.
