Guatemala Declares a State of Emergency

As of last Saturday, September 5th, Guatemala as a nation has declared a state of emergency due to the substantial downpoors the country has received over the previous few days and the mud slides that have resulted. These rains are the worst this country has seen since hurricane Agatha came through three months ago. The mudslides that have resulted have wiped out thousands of homes and killed what is rumored to be 38 victims and rescuers.
Luckily, the city of Antigua, where we have been staying, is a well constructed and designed city and is not at high risk of these disasters. Several of the surrounding cities, however are among some of the distruction. Jocotenango, which is just a 10-15 minute taxi ride from Antigua suffered a mud slide that wiped out the homes of nearly 200 people and killed one woman known well in the town. The people who have lost their homes are staying in the public school building nearby while they are also received food donations from an American run organization called Nuestros Ahijados, which is where I do my own volunteering here.
The lake nearest here, Lake Atitlan, where Emi and I spent several days, suffered a severe mud slide that took out an entire public chicken bus with local Guatemalans and a shuttle carrying several tourists. Many people who attempted to help during this accident were swept away with the mud slide as well.
There have been rumors that Guatemala City itself has also suffered mudslides, and that the roads from here to the city have all been closed for several days. Emi, who has a flight scheduled out of the city tomorrow morning has been really worried. Many flights have been canceled over the past few days because the flight's passengers simply cannot get to the actual airport to board any planes.
Luckily the rain has stopped for now, but the locals here anticipate a couple more months of downpoor before the dry season begins. There has been more rain this year than in the past few decades, if not the most ever.


Some friends of mine here and I took some motorcycles out of Antigua this weekend to a little beach town called Hawaii. without motorcycles, we never would have gotten there. A trip that was supposed to take 2 hours took nearly 5 because of all the flooded roads. Had we known the roads were going to be this bad, we would not have attempted it. But it made for some INTERESTING terrain to say the least. At one point the water was up to our butts on the motorcycles. We were so lucky that none of the bikes flooded. Many times we had to jump off and while us three girls hopped into a pickup truck to go across the stretch of water, the boys pushed the bikes through. Once we were there, though the beach was amazingly sunny and gorgeous. PICS below!