The scenes are becoming all too familiar. Deforested hillsides, waterlogged after days of rain, collapse in rivers of mud, burying whole villages. In 1998, it was Honduras that bore the brunt of Hurricane Mitch, a category 5 storm with winds of up to 180 miles per hour (290 kph) that killed some 9,000 people. Last year, Haiti was hit twice, the second time by a tropical storm, Jeanne, which killed an estimated 3,000. This time it was the turn of the Mayan Indian highlands of Guatemala. Hurricane Stan, later demoted to tropical storm, dumped almost a week of torrential rains on the slopes of the volcanoes that ring Lake Atitlan, a popular tourist destination. Most people were asleep when the mudslide hit at about 3am on October 6th. Two villages, Panabaj and Tzanchaj, were entombed by a mudflow half a mile wide and an estimated 15-20 feet deep. Local leaders called off the futile and risky rescue operations, requesting that the villages be declared mass graves.
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