LAS TEJERIAS: Hopes were fading on Tuesday of finding alive any of 56 people missing after a devastating landslide swept through a Venezuelan town with 36 confirmed deaths to date. President Nicolas Maduro said on state television that the death toll is expected to reach 100.
Neighbors and rescuers -- some 3,000 police, soldiers and other professionals -- were engaged in the ever-more desperate search among the fast-hardening mud, tree trunks and rocks dumped on Saturday on the town of Las Tejerias.
Rescuers said it would be difficult to find any survivors in the town some 50 kilometres from the capital Caracas.
"I don't know whether to scream, I don't know whether to run... whether to cry," Nathalie Matos, 34, said of the frustrating wait for news on the fate of her 65-year-old mother, who she had on the phone as the deluge came.
"She told me: 'Daughter, I am drowning, the water got in, get me out, get me out... save me!'" Matos recounted.
"I tried to call her back, she picked up, but there was just noise." A rescue team is at her mother's mud-filled house.
"The dog gave signs here, in this area that was the living room and the kitchen," said a firefighter, though all their digging so far had yielded nothing.
"I know she is there," insisted Mato.
A few metres away, another team examined a piece of land where a house stood until Saturday, when Las Tejerias became the site of Venezuela's worst natural disaster in decades.
Neighbours were helping to reconstruct what would have been the floor plan to get an idea of where to dig.
A civil protection official, who did not have permission to speak in an official capacity, said most victims of the storm died after they were struck by tree trunks, large rocks or other objects swept along by the raging waters, and others of hypothermia.
Unusually heavy rains caused a major river and several streams to overflow on Saturday, causing a torrent of mud that washed away cars, parts of homes, businesses and telephone wires, and felled massive trees. Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said a month's worth of rain fell in the area in just eight hours. The government has declared three days of mourning. - AFP
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