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Landslide Devastates Remote Mexican Town

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By EDUARDO VERDUGO, The Associated Press

Published: November 7, 2007

OSTUACAN, Mexico - When a mountain of mud and a wall of water buried a Mexican village in a "mini-tsunami," only 14 of the 600 people there disappeared.

One reason? Jittery cattle.

The villagers' nervous animals somehow sensed the impending disaster and fled to higher ground. Many people got out of bed to chase after them, then watched as their homes were engulfed when a rain-soaked hill collapsed, a senior official said Tuesday.

"The animals felt it and they ran," federal Interior Secretary Francisco Ramirez Acuna told the Televisa network. "The residents went after them with rifles and shotguns."
Rescuers dived through a murky river and dug among mountains of earth in search of victims Tuesday, two days after the landslide crashed down on the tiny hamlet of San Juan Grijalva in Mexico's southernmost state, Chiapas.

Fourteen to 16 people were reported missing, Ramirez said. Chiapas Civil Protection official Alfredo Chan said authorities also would search nearby towns to see if victims had sought refuge there.

The landslide in San Juan Grijalva added to woes caused by widespread flooding and heavy rain across Mexico and Central America. In Honduras, authorities ordered dozens of people to flee the Atlantic coast and at least two people drowned in floodwaters, including a 2-year-old boy swept away by a raging river.

Officials said that about 80 percent of Mexico's Gulf coast state of Tabasco was underwater at one point and some 500,000 had their homes damaged or destroyed.

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