Tropical storm Agatha creates giant sinkhole in Guatemala City
- AAP
- June 01, 2010
DOWNPOURS caused by tropical storm Agatha have created a giant sinkhole in Guatemala City, while 120 people have died and at least 53 are missing throughout Guatemala.
The sinkhole, which formed in the northern part of the capital city, swallowed up a space larger than the area of a street intersection.
Residents told CNN that a three-storey building and a house fell into the hole.
A private security guard was reportedly killed when the sinkhole opened up, but authorities had not confirmed the fatality.
Residents said a poor sewage drainage system underground was to blame for the sinkhole.
A similar hole opened up nearby last year, they told CNN.
Flooding and landslides from Tropical Storm Agatha have killed at least 144 people and left thousands homeless in Central America, officials said yesterday, with Guatemala the country hardest hit by the season's first tropical storm.
In the department of Chimaltenango - a province west of Guatemala City - landslides buried dozens of rural Indian communities and killed at least 60 people, Governor Erick de Leon said.
In all some 110,000 people were evacuated in Guatemala.
Thousands more have fled their homes in neighbouring Honduras, where the death toll rose to 15 even as meteorologists predicted three more days of rain.
In El Salvador, at least 179 landslides have been reported and 11,000 people were evacuated. The death toll was nine, President Mauricio Funes said.
Agatha was demoted from a tropical storm to a tropical depression on Saturday night and lost its status as a depression on Sunday evening.
It was the first named storm for the Pacific hurricane season. The Atlantic hurricane season starts on Tuesday.
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