124 killed in El Salvador floods, mudslides

Hundreds of soldiers, police and residents dug through rock and debris in Verapaz looking for another 60 people missing after the mudslide, which struck before Sunday dawn while residents were sleeping.

Matias Mendoza, 26, was at home with his wife Claudia and their year-old son Franklin when the earth began moving.
“It was about two in the morning when the rain started coming down harder, and the earth started shaking,” Mendoza recalled. “I warned my wife and grabbed my son, and all of a sudden we heard a sound. The next thing I knew I was lying among parts of the walls of my house.”

“A few minutes later, I found my wife and my son in the middle of the rubble, and, thank God, we’re alive,” said Mendoza, who suffered cuts on his cheek that emergency workers stitched up.

Almost 7,000 people saw their homes damaged by landslides or cut off by floodwaters following three days of downpours from a low-pressure system indirectly related to Hurricane Ida, which brushed Mexico’s Cancun resort on Sunday before steaming into the Gulf of Mexico.