Boing Boing reader Morelos Barros says,
I am a loyal fan and reader from Mexico City. My country is being hit by hurricane Stan and we are in pretty bad shape.
I am sitting here at work drinking coffee and thinking how lucky I've been so far. Hurracaine Stan has hit Mexico in the worst possible way and if you think the devastation in NOLA was terrible, just look at international news and see how we are in such a bad shape.
Seven states have been declared red alert and disaster zones. As of this writing there are several thousand people without a home and children asking for food.
As usual, government has been quick to hide the real death toll, but bloggers and unofficial info report that it's in the thousands. This is a dark time for a poor country.
In related tech news, a group called Telecom Without Frontiers (TSF) says it's deploying emergency satellite communications facilities throughout storm-affected Guatemala and other Central American countries. Link.
Here's a New Scientist article with more detail on areas where mudslides and flooding have occurred.
Guatemala appears to have sustained the worst damage, with nearly 200 confirmed dead throughout the country — 70 died from a mudslide in a small pueblo called cantón Panabaj, in the Sololá area near beautiful lago Atitlán.
I've driven by that village. The people of this country have witnessed so much death. Whether the cause is political or "weather violence," the gente natural always suffer the hardest blows.
BoingBoing — and my own family — has friends throughout this region. Best wishes go out to them, and their surrounding communities.
Image: Mayan women mourn dead after the Panabaj mudslide today. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd).
Update: up to a thousand or more people are now presumed to have died in the Panabaj mudslide — possibly the entire population of the pueblo. Link
