ACAPULCO, Mexico — With a low, rumbling roar, an arc of dirt, rock and mud tumbled down the hillside in the remote mountain village of La Pintada, sweeping houses in its path, burying half the hamlet and leaving 68 people missing.
It was the biggest known tragedy caused by twin weekend storms that struck Mexico, creating floods and landslides across the nation and killing at least 97 people as of Thursday — not counting those missing in La Pintada.
All of the nearly 400 surviving members of the village remember where they were at the moment the deadly wave struck Monday afternoon, Mexico’s Independence Day.
When the rain-soaked hillside, drenched by days of rain during Tropical Storm Manuel, gave way, it swept away Nancy Gomez, 21, and her 1-year-old baby in a wave of dirt that covered her entirely, leaving only a small air pocket between her and her child.
“I screamed a lot, for them to come rescue me, but I never heard anything from my mother or father or my cousin,” she said, lying on a foam mattress in a temporary shelter in Acapulco. Eventually, relatives came from a nearby house and dug her and the baby out.
The missing from La Pintada were not yet included in the official national death toll of 97, said Luis Felipe Puente, Mexico’s federal Civil Protection coordinator. About 35,000 homes across the country were damaged or destroyed. Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said he now had a list of names of 68 missing La Pintada residents but suggested that some might be alive and might have taken refuge in neighboring ranches or hamlets.
Government photos show mudslides and collapsed bridges on key highways, including the Highway of the Sun, a four-lane expressway that links Acapulco to Mexico City. All the main arteries to the Pacific Coast resort town remained closed Thursday.
