No deaths confirmed in mudslide

Associated Press

OAXACA, Mexico

A huge mudslide first thought to have buried hundreds of people has left only 11 missing, and there are no confirmed dead, authorities said Tuesday night, backing off earlier predictions of a catastrophe in Mexico’s rain-soaked southern state of Oaxaca.

Federal Interior Minister Francisco Blake and Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz both confirmed the drastically reduced toll from the slide that hit the town of Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec early Tuesday.

“So far, no one is confirmed dead. Eleven are missing,” Ruiz told The Associated Press. “We hope that this type of information will continue and they [the missing] will be found.”

Initial reports from Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec, a rural mountain town 373 miles southeast of Mexico City, said a hillside collapsed on hundreds of sleeping residents after several days of heavy rains in the aftermath of a hurricane and tropical storm that hit Mexico and Central America.

Civil-protection authorities first reported seven people killed and at least 100 missing, but Ruiz later reported casualties as four dead and 12 missing.

Communications with the town were difficult after the pre-dawn slide. Soldiers and civil-protection and Red Cross workers couldn’t reach the area for nearly 10 hours because mud and rocks blocked roads and a bridge was damaged, while bad weather prevented helicopters from being used.

President Felipe Calderon reported on his Twitter account Tuesday afternoon that an army commander and 30 soldiers had reached the town by foot and that there was a lot of damage but “perhaps not of the magnitude initially reported.”