By
The Associated Press
SANTA TECLA, El Salvador - As the death toll in El Salvador's devastating earthquake topped 600 and continued to climb, authorities made a final push to find trapped survivors yesterday and shifted their attention to coping with the growing number of corpses.
Workers were burying unidentified bodies in common graves at the municipal cemetery in this devastated town, and the government said 3,000 coffins requested from Colombia would arrive soon. The chances of anyone else emerging from the rubble alive appeared slim.
Meanwhile, finger-pointing began: In Santa Tecla, where a mountainside buried a whole neighborhood, environmental activists and authorities said deforestation - and greed - contributed to the disaster.
Residents of the buried neighborhood, Las Colinas, had pleaded with Congress and the Supreme Court to block the construction of mansions on the hillside above them, saying the lack of ground cover left those below vulnerable to landslides. Their pleas were ignored, and construction continued.
Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake loosened that hillside, sending dirt raining on the homes below and bringing down some of the mansions. Angry residents argued Monday that the development had caused hundreds of deaths.
"What good does money do us if we are subjecting our children to something like this?" Santa Tecla Mayor Oscar Ortiz asked.
Ecologist Ricardo Navarro accused members of Congress and government officials of negligence for failing to stop the deforestation.
"Several urbanization projects were born ... and there you have the results, hundreds of deaths," he said.
In Santa Tecla yesterday, rescuers cleared the area where the mountainside buried the neighborhood. In the silence, Taiwanese technicians with heartbeat detectors and Spanish rescuers with sniffer dogs combed the area to make sure nobody was still alive beneath ground. They then planned to use bulldozers to remove the mud and recover the remaining bodies, believed to number in the hundreds.
The only rescue was of a German Shepherd named Bobby, who appeared to be in good shape. Bobby's owner, who lost his mother and his brother, led the dog away.
As information began to trickle in from the countryside, where hundreds of communities remain almost completely cut off from the outside world, President Francisco Flores said workers had recovered 609 bodies in El Salvador and were searching for hundreds more. At least six people were killed in neighboring Guatemala.
Flores said 2,412 people were injured and more than 45,000 houses were damaged or destroyed in Saturday's quake. In a televised address to the nation Monday night, he said he expected the death toll to rise significantly.
He said 3,000 coffins were expected "in the coming hours" from Colombia, a major exporter of coffins in the region. But officials said yesterday that arrangements still hadn't been made and that the coffins might arrive later in the week.
"We must face this phenomenon with serenity and with hope," Flores said. "We have the capacity to face what has happened, but right now the most important thing is solidarity with the people who need it most."
In Santa Tecla Monday, Raquel Barrera waited for authorities to help her pull the newly uncovered bodies of her husband and 12-year-old son from the ground.
"This is a nightmare. I can't believe this is happening," said Barrera, whose husband was a well-known professional baseball player in El Salvador. "I left them alive, and now look, they're underneath all this."
Although the largest number of deaths appeared to be in Las Colinas, the quake caused 185 landslides across El Salvador, burying anyone who couldn't get out of the way fast enough and blocking hundreds of roads.
Police said nearly 18,000 people had been evacuated from dangerous areas. Many were living with relatives or in shelters. Others who still had homes lacked basic services. Water service was cut to as many as half of the country's 6 million people, the Pan-American Health Organization said.
"We are doing all we can to strengthen the hopes of our countrymen," Ortiz said. "But we are a nation of very strong people and we will need that strength now."
Aftershocks continued to rock the country, terrifying residents and knocking more debris onto highways. Two strong tremors shook many out of bed yesterday morning. Many towns were reachable only by helicopter, and little was known about damage or deaths in isolated communities.
"I am totally out on the street," Carmelo Lopez, whose house and four family members were buried in a landslide that wiped out a coffee plantation outside of San Salvador. "I am alone."
