Mitch leaves nation in ruins No water. No food. No electricity\ No phones. Few houses remain; many people sleep in a fruit packing plant. No roads. No bridges. The only access is by helicopter, but flights are rare —usually to evacuate sick or injured. There is plenty ’ of mud —as far as the eye can see. As people look at bean and com fields, plantain and banana plants, yucca stalks and rice all equally laid to waste by Hurricane Mitch, they worry about hunger. They worry about people stealing what little there is left. And they worry about merchants taking ad vantage of the situation. This is particularly true in the Mosquitia, where between 90 and 100 percent of crops were lost. Rescue teams were under manned and underequipped to help the thousands stranded on rooftops or high ground. Telephone service and electricity were down m many communities. And the initial lack U.S. proposed $950 million more to help rebuild region of police or military presence in the cities allowed hundreds of looters to ransack unprotected resi dences and businesses. When I came inside the room, Ignacia, a young woman of 22, stood up and walked toward me as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t, instead, she returned to her chair and sat there while looking at me silently. I explained to her I wanted to conduct an interview, and perhaps the chance of being taken note of in the middle of all those thousands of people encour aged her to come forward. “I come from la Colonia Villa Nueva. Sector 2; do you know where it is?” she told me. “Well, our house had sunk in the edge of the ravine. We lost all our pos sessions; we get a little bread and a cup of coffee. I give a little bit of bread to my kid next to me because babies and little kids won’t get milk until the next day at ten. That's about it.” Bodies are everywhere, victims of landslides and the waters. The most conserva tive calculations estimate thousands, not hundreds of deaths. Many municipal governments have begun to run out of food and potable water. The capital of Repub lic is in a disastrous, calami tous situation. On top of it all, the death of Tegucigalpa Mayor Dr. Cesar Castellanos in a fatal heli- copter accident while working with relief efforts has left citizens deso late. Overflowing rivers and land slides have caused complete bar rios to disappear even though ex tensive preventive efforts were made for early evacuations, but still not all the affected were able to be saved: many victims have for more than five days sat on the roofs of their homes, without food, exposed to the weather, waiting to be rescued.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers