Mexico landslide proves less deadly than feared

REUTERS - A landslide in a remote mountain town sent Mexican authorities scrambling to deploy rescue workers on Tuesday, but initial reports that hundreds were buried proved overblown.

Local officials originally said the landslide in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, a poor indigenous town in southwestern Oaxaca state, had left hundreds of houses buried and at least 500 people believed dead.

But as soldiers and other rescue workers made it to the isolated area, they learned the early morning landslide was far less deadly.

“There are no confirmed deaths up until now. During the morning we received different reports but as of now there are no bodies,” Interior Minister Francisco Blake told Televisa television.

Blake said 11 people, three adults and eight children, were reported missing.

Oaxaca police said on Tuesday afternoon only a handful of homes appeared to have been destroyed, a far cry from earlier reports from the Oaxaca governor that up to 300 homes were swept away when a rain-soaked hillside collapsed around 4 a.m.

In the hours after the news broke early on Tuesday, the government of President Felipe Calderon declared the landslide a national tragedy and dispatched marines and other rescue workers in planes and rugged vehicles.

As more than 400 military personnel, doctors and police struggled to reach the town, some making their way by foot, local officials gave conflicting reports about the toll the landslide had taken.

Even on Tuesday evening, access remained difficult to Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec with roads and bridges washed out by heavy rain and blocked by mudslides.

Civil protection authorities in Oaxaca said the landslide was due to heavy rainfall from Tropical Storm Matthew, which killed 12 people in Central America over the weekend.

Parts of Mexico have grappled this season with unusually heavy rains that have triggered floods, forced thousands of people from their homes and hit crops.

Oaxaca, a popular destination for tourists, is also known as one of Mexico’s top growers of high-quality coffee, although it is only the country’s fourth-largest coffee producing state by volume with an annual crop of around 400,000 60-kg bags.

A top representative of Oaxaca’s coffee growers said it was too early to asses the current damages to the crop but if heavy rains continue through October, up to 20 percent of the harvest could be lost.