TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- The rain-heavy remnants of Hurricane Eta flooded homes from Panama to Guatemala on Thursday as the death toll across Central America rose to at least 57, and aid organizations warned the flooding and mudslides were creating a slow-moving humanitarian disaster across the region.
The storm that hit Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane Tuesday had become more of a vast tropical rainstorm, but it was advancing so slowly and dumping so much rain that much of Central America remained on high alert. Forecasters said the now-tropical depression was expected to regather and head toward Cuba and possibly the Gulf of Mexico by early next week.
On Thursday afternoon, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said a water-soaked mountainside in the central part of the country had slid down onto the town of San Cristobal Verapaz, burying homes and leaving at least 25 people dead.
Two other slides in Huehuetenango had killed at least 12 more, he said.
David de Leon, spokesman for the national disaster agency, said there were reports of 50 people missing in the Verapaz slide, but government rescue teams had not reached the site.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzyCpZFPbmM]
Earlier Thursday, five other people had been killed in smaller slides in Guatemala.
Giammattei said 60% of the eastern city of Puerto Barrios was flooded and 48 more hours of rain was expected.
Guatemala's toll was on top of 13 victims in Honduras and two in Nicaragua. Panamanian authorities reported eight people missing.
In Honduras, the national police said Thursday that six more bodies had been found, bringing that country's toll to 13. The bodies of two adults and two children were found after a mudslide Wednesday in the township of Gualala, and two boys, 8 and 11, died in another mudslide in El Nispero.
Earlier, residents found the body of a girl buried in a landslide Wednesday in mountains outside the north coast city of Tela. In the same area, a large landslide buried a home with a mother and two children inside, according to Honduras Fire Department spokesman Oscar Triminio.
Triminio said there was also a 2-year-old girl killed in Santa Barbara district when she and her mother were swept away by floodwaters. The mother survived.
Heavy rain was forecast to continue across Honduras through at least Thursday as Eta moves toward the northern city of San Pedro Sula.
Dozens of residents of the San Pedro Sula neighborhood of Satelite had to abandon their homes at 4 a.m. Thursday when water from the Chamelecon river arrived at their doorsteps.
[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/116eta/]
Honduran officials earlier reported that a 12-year-old girl died in a mudslide and a 15-year-old boy drowned trying to cross a rain-swollen river.
Marvin Aparicio of Honduras' emergency management agency said Wednesday that some 457 homes had been damaged, mostly by floodwaters. There were 41 communities cut off by washed-out roads and nine bridges in the country were wiped out by swollen rivers.
At least eight people were reported missing after flooding and landslides in the Panama province of Chiriqui, which borders Costa Rica.
"The situation is worrisome, a lot of help is needed," said Javier Pitti, mayor of Tierras Altas in Chiriqui. Landslides had closed many roads, including the main highway connecting the province to the rest of Panama.
The homes of more than 200 residents of the Ngabe Bugle autonomous Indigenous area were flooded out of their homes.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami forecast that parts of Nicaragua and Honduras could receive 15 to 25 inches of rain, with 40 inches possible in some isolated parts.
When what's left of the storm wobbles back into the Caribbean, it will regain some strength and become a tropical storm again, forecasts show.
And then Eta is predicted to slowly move toward Cuba and Florida, or at least close enough to Florida for forecasters to warn of 7 inches of rain for South Florida in the next five to seven days. And next week, Eta could even move into the Gulf of Mexico.
"Whatever comes out [of Central America] is going to linger awhile," said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. "I'm not convinced we're done with Eta."
Information for this article was contributed by Sonia Perez D., Juan Zamorano, Seth Borenstein and Christopher Sherman of The Associated Press.
