Relief
Effort in Honduras in Dire Need of Resources
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduran authorities struggled on Tuesday with
meager
resources to deal with catastrophic damage from torrential rains and floods
spawned by a
hurricane, as
the official death toll here climbed to 362. Experts expect that figure
to go far higher.
Officials said
thousands were still trapped by flooding in remote regions. Most major
roads and
bridges were
destroyed by flood waters or blocked by mudslides after a week of relentless
rain
dumped several
feet of water on this impoverished country in Central America.
Military officials
estimated that at least 5,000 people have died and that 600,000, 10 percent
of the
population,
have lost their housing.
Entire neighborhoods
in Tegucigalpa, the capital, were washed away on Friday, when the Choluteca
River broke
over its banks and inundated many parts of the city, burying houses, cars
and people in
mud.
On Tuesday evening
the waters had receded, and the sun came out. Thousands of tired and stunned
people returned
to the wreckage of their houses. Many had lost everything they owned. Others
had
lost family
members.
"I lost everything,"
Ana Mercedes Ramirez, 38, a homemaker, said as she peered into the remains
of
her house in
the La Oya neighborhood. What was once her living room was filled with
several feet of
mud. "I've never
seen anything like this, not even with Hurricane Fifi did anything like
this happen."
Fifi, in 1974, left 10,000 Hondurans dead.
The latest storm,
called Mitch, struck last week, leaving much of the downtown along the
river a
disaster scene.
Factories, hospitals, prisons and bridges have been washed away. Some
neighborhoods,
where hundreds of houses stood, have become muddy wastelands of debris,
rotting
animals and
human corpses,
President Carlos
Flores Facusse pleaded on Monday night for international aid. Top military
officials
conceded that
they lacked equipment to rescue people in remote regions. Many families
have been
waiting for
days without food or water on top of their houses or perching in trees,
the officials said.
"The demand is
so great and the equipment we have is so little that we feel impotent,"
the Army
chief-of-staff,
Gen. Mario Hung Pacheco, said.
More than 5,000
people were waiting for rescue in southeastern Choluteca, and at least
2,000 were
trapped by flood
waters in San Pedro Sula, the authorities said. There were reports from
the
northern town
of El Progreso of desperate parents' tying small children to the limbs
of tall trees to
protect them
from drowning.
The hurricane
was one of the most powerful storms to hit the Caribbean in modern times.
The tightly
wound eye of
the storm never hit the mainland. Instead, it hovered over the Caribbean
and the Gulf
of Honduras
for days, dumping up to two feet of rain a day.
Honduran officials
characterized the storm as the worst natural disaster in recent history.
Floods and
landslides have
destroyed more than two-thirds of the crops, experts said, raising a possibility
of
severe food
shortages, knocking out scores of bridges and blocking nearly every major
road.
The floods have
wiped out many food warehouses and have halted most commercial traffic,
making
it nearly impossible
to transport food, and many communities have no potable water, officials
said.
Officials also
said there is a great danger of cholera and other diseases. With limited
equipment, the
military and
rescue workers are having trouble recovering corpses, and the floods have
wreaked
havoc on sewer
systems and have washed out latrines. The situation is a recipe for disease.
Many residents
of the capital doubted the government had the resources to rebuild the
destroyed
areas and were
pinning their hopes on international aid operations.
"Only with help
from abroad can we make it out of this situation," said 23-ear old Ana
Sepeda, an
office worker
whose house was severely damaged by the flood waters on Saturday. "We are
trying
to continue
forward, but it is difficult, especially for the people who lost all their
things."