GRANADA, Nicaragua — Victims of the first tropical storm of the region’s hurricane season began returning to their storm-battered homes in Guatemala on Tuesday because of a lack of emergency food and beds to house them, relief officials said.
Rescue workers continued to dig bodies from the rubble of landslides and floods that left at least 179 dead in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, reviving bitter memories of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
“We need water, diapers, food and cots, but what we need most is food; there is nothing,” said Elbia Coraro, the sanitation chief for Guatemala’s national disaster agency. “The kids need to eat.”
Guatemala was hardest hit by the storm, known as Agatha, with at least 153 deaths and 155,000 evacuees in a relief effort complicated by back-to-back disasters and depleted food stocks.
An eruption of the Pacaya volcano, the most visited of Guatemala’s eight active craters for its spectacular lava flows, blanketed parts of the capital in ash the day before the storm began setting off floods and landslides.
A journalist was killed by a spew of rocks from Pacaya last week.
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