Rescue operations slowly resume Tuesday into Wednesday in Alausi, southern Ecuador, where a landslide has left at least 11 dead and 67 missing, but hope of finding survivors is fading more than two days after the disaster.
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Accompanied by sniffer dogs, groups of rescuers and local residents carefully search the rubble after a huge mountain slab collapsed in this town in Chimborazo province, around 300 km north of Quito, on Sunday night.
“It will be almost impossible to carry out a complete removal (of the rubble) and what we will find when we find them will be dead bodies,” explains Adriana Guzmán, a member of a fire brigade team, sadly.
According to the latest official report, the landslide left 11 dead and 67 missing, and 163 homes were affected by the mudslide, which fell on an outlying area nestled on the mountainside.
On site, the survivors took part in the rescue operations all day Tuesday between anger and helplessness to try to free their buried relatives.
“Here rest my daughter, my granddaughter, my whole family (…) Our pain is terrible,” Carlos Maquero launched to AFP with a pained face and uttered terrible cries for help to speed up the excavation work.
“Thank God my sisters were able to escape (…), but my sister-in-law couldn’t make it, she was buried there with her babies,” complains Carmen Quiroz.
As the hours pass, hopes of finding survivors dwindle.
There is a “piling up of tons and tons of earth” that “makes it difficult for the victims to survive,” Fernando Yanza, one of the firefighters working at the site, told AFP.
The accumulated soil “deprives what little oxygen there is, and that’s the main problem” faced by people trapped under the current, Yanza said after emerging from a four-meter-deep excavation without finding any sign of life.
“The more you dig, the more dangerous it is,” he added, because the ground is unstable.
“As long as necessary”
When Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso arrived at the scene Monday night, he was greeted with boos and hostile shouts: “Outside Lasso!”
“I saw the search and rescue work of the rescuers with my own eyes,” he commented on Twitter after meeting with local authorities, assuring that these operations would continue “as long as necessary”.
In the disaster area, around 600 houses that had been spared the landslide were evacuated by order of the authorities. The government has set up three shelters for victims of the landslide, which covers 24.3 hectares.
The story of Jacob, a black labrador desperately looking for his master under the rubble, went viral on social media: the animal sniffs, digs, howls… According to local media, only two family members who welcomed it were rescued . Neighbors who recognized the dog put a green t-shirt on him to identify him.
The area where the tragedy occurred has been on “yellow alert” for rainfall since February. In addition, authorities had warned of a possible road collapse in the same section.
Battered by heavy rains that caused widespread flooding, Ecuador last week declared states of emergency in 13 of the country’s 24 provinces to mobilize resources to help those affected.
Before the mudslide, Ecuador already had 22 dead and more than 6,900 weather-affected homes.