Recovery after the Guatemalan Mudslide that erased part of the town of Santa Catarina Pinula last week has uncovered 237 bodies so far from the mountains of mud and debris in the mudslide created from heavy rainfall.
Backhoes continued to remove thousands of tons of dirt from the acres-wide mudflow in the neighborhood of Cambray, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, with very little hope of finding anyone alive.
Officials have reported that many other people are still missing.
Several hundred people were being housed in shelters run by the local government National Disaster Reduction Commission known as Conred.
The agency has said it issued a number of warnings about the dangers of living on the base of this mountain area. Officials this week declared the area uninhabitable.
Manuel Pocasangre, the communications director for the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula said state employees in recent years had gone door-to-door to talk to people about the risks of where they lived even in the last year.
Stating that he had warned Mayor Tono Coro of the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula that the river was eating away at the base of the steep hill. “What we know is that people were conscious about the risk they were taking,” Pocasangre said Wednesday.
Maldonado acknowledged there are many neighborhoods like Cambray in and around Guatemala City that are at risk of flooding or mudslides
The country’s prosecutor’s office has announced an investigation of the matter.
Tropical Storm Erika has devastated the tiny island of Dominica, triggering landslides that have left at least six people missing and hundreds of people without homes.
The Antiqua Weather Service says the storm dumped 9 inches of rain onto the mountainous island late Wednesday and then 6 more inches on Thursday.
About 80 percent of the island is without electricity. The country’s airport has been closed after flood waters covered cars and at least one small airplane.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) says that the storm is moving west with sustained winds of 50 m.p.h. and is expected to cover Puerto Rico Thursday. The storm continues to be what forecasters call “poorly organized” and is not expected to strengthen over the next two days.
Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said that while the storm could cut off power and water service, the storm would also bring much needed rain to the parched nation.
“We’re happy given the dry conditions, but it does highlight the need to be on alert,” he told CBS.
Forecasters say it is still too early to know whether or not the storm will reach Florida with any kind of tropical storm or hurricane strength.
Meanwhile in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Ignacio strengthened into a hurricane. The storm is moving slowly westward, about 1,100 miles east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.
Family and friends of three Wisconsin sisters are praising God after they were found alive after going missing in the Wyoming wilderness.
“They’re tired, cold (and) hungry, but otherwise healthy and happy to be on their way out,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Lori Iverson said.
The sisters, Megan, Erin, and Kelsi Andrews-Sharer, left June 28th for an extended camping trip in Grand Teton National Park and were supposed to return home on Tuesday. When the ladies didn’t arrive and made no contact with the family, authorities began a search.
The women’s car was found 15 miles south of Jackson. A ground search began Wednesday with dogs and helicopters.
Thursday morning, a local guide heard of the search and remembered seeing a person wearing a white raincoat in a part of the park that has no trails the previous day. Local officials say the detailed description given by the guide allowed them to focus their search pattern and the women were found 20 minutes later.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials credited the girls for preparing for unexpected conditions and staying together as being a key to quickly finding and rescuing them.
Disaster teams have recovered 77 bodies from a cruise ship that capsized in the Yangtze River during a storm. At least 360 other victims of the disaster are still missing.
Authorities say that only 14 people survived the ship’s capsizing on Monday night. They say some of those survivors jumped from the ship at the start of the storm and were able to swim to shore. Three survived in an air pocket in the capsized ship until rescuers were able to hear them yelling for help and sent in divers to save them.
Transport Ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang said that the mission has moved from rescue of survivors to recovery of bodies. The ship is going to be brought upright through steel bars under the ship and two 500 ton cranes.
Xu told reporters despite cutting holes in the ship to try and find survivors, the likelihood of anyone alive is “very slim.”
Xu said righting the vessel “will enable an audit of all the cabins to be carried out as quickly as possible and will be good for searching for the missing in the shortest period of time” and allow them to act to “preserve the dignity of the dead.”
The ship, the Eastern Star, reportedly contained mostly retirees who were viewing the vista along the river.
Government officials had previously cited the ship for safety infractions. At one point in 2013, it was held from operation because of safety issues according to the maritime bureau.
A Canadian pastor is missing in North Korea.
Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim, the head of the 3,000 member Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, was scheduled to return home from a visit to North Korea one month ago. No one has heard from the pastor since that time.
“[Lim] left Toronto on Jan. 27 for Seoul, then flew to China and crossed over the northern border of North Korea into the Rajin region,” explained Lisa Pak, official spokesperson for both the family of Rev. Lim and Light Korean Presbyterian, told The Christian Post. “[He] traveled to the Rajin region to continue support for the on-going ministry of orphanages, nursery and nursing homes.”
Pak said that Rev. Lim had traveled to North Korea many times previously and knew how to deal with the political situation in the region.
The Associated Press noted that the country had just lifted travel restrictions due to Ebola.
“Pak said they are not sure why they haven’t heard from him, but noted North Korea just lifted severe restrictions on foreign travel imposed last year to keep the Ebola virus from crossing its borders,” reported the AP.
“The already isolated country virtually closed its borders to foreigners last October, halting all non-essential visas and requiring those few foreigners allowed in to undergo three weeks of quarantine.”
Western intelligence agencies are scrambling after discovering that 11 commercial aircraft have disappeared from the airport in Tripoli airport.
Islamist militias took control of the airport last month as they continue to take over the country. There have been continual battles around the airport between the rival Islamist groups that have resulted in intelligence agencies not being able to confirm which groups may have flown the aircraft to other locations.
The fear is that many of the planes will be used to make attacks on September 11th, the 13th anniversary of the attacks on New York and the 2nd anniversary of the attack on the Benghazi embassy assault.
The airport still has seven aircraft in various states of damage sitting around the terminal. However, Libyan Airlines had 14 planes this summer and state-owned Afriqiyah Airways had 13 aircraft. All but 11 have been found since the airport was closed in mid-July.
Military forces all across North Africa have been placed on a heightened alert because of the missing planes.
