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GUATEMALA-VOLCANO-SCENE
Grim search in the rubble at Guatemala’s empty Ground Zero
EL RODEO, Guatemala, June 8, 2018 (AFP) – Police tied a red tape to an
electricity pole outside Henry Rivas’s house. It’s supposed to warn of
danger, but after Sunday’s devastating volcanic eruption, Henry has come to
think of it as marking a boundary between life and death.
Two hundred meters (220 yards) up the road, on the other side of the tape,
is the dust-blanketed heap of rubble that once was the small town of San
Miguel Los Lotes. It bore the brunt of Fuego’s wrath. Locals are referring to
it as “Ground Zero.”
Now it’s a sea of still, smoldering gray dust that, kicked up with the
slightest movement, hangs in the hazy air along with the stench of charred
chickens, cows and other animals.
Beneath this thick ash blanket, along with the heaped cars and vans and
rubble, lie an unknown number of bodies. The known death toll stands at 109,
with nearly 200 missing.
“Now we are afraid that the lava will bury us,” said Rivas, 37, who like
most people here, was unbothered by the volcano’s occasional activity until
Sunday.
He was away working in Honduras when a fast-moving stream of boiling mud
and incandescent rocks scoured the neighboring village from the side of the
mountain.
From his patio there’s not a soul to be seen in the neighborhood. Most have
yet to return since Sunday’s catastrophic eruption.
The only noticeable movement is of strays dogs and chickens picking at the
dust, occasional emergency service trucks loaded with ash and the searchers
who recovered four more bodies here on Wednesday.
Rivas’s wife told him what happened on Sunday. The authorities gave them no
warning. She left running with her four children, joining what turned out to
be the survivors from Los Lotes.
Since then, Henry says his wife only thinks about where they are going to
live now. Their home was spared, but the memories of what happened are too
strong for them to go back, he said.
They are now putting their hopes in divine intervention and President Jimmy
Morales.
“We ask God and the president to give us a plot far from here,” he said.
– Fear of looting –
In El Rodeo, home to 8,500 people a kilometer away, locals say they are
still spooked by the rumblings of the volcano as well as the threat of
looters.
“I ran out and left the store open, but when I came back they had taken
everything,” said Demetrio Cuc, 33, who owns a grocery store at a busy
intersection in El Rodeo.
Cuc’s store is one of the few shops that have reopened since Sunday. The
neighboring pharmacy and a takeaway have not.
Deissy Omar, 20, returned three days after the disaster to “pick up a few
of my things” she left behind when she fled Sunday. Others weren’t so lucky.
Her cousin, his wife and their three children were killed, she said.
Omar’s family walked several kilometers from the town to a house they have
been given the loan of. Now depending on state help, they have asked to be
rehoused far from the volcano.
Older neighbors say the volcano doesn’t scare them. They have grown
accustomed to its grumblings over the years, though they recognize Sunday’s
eruption was unprecedented.
“I have seen thousands of eruptions but none like this one,” said Francisco
Javier Canas, an 81-year-old from El Salvador, who have lived for more than
50 years in the area around the volcano.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0837 hrs