| November 11, 1998 | THE BOERGER REPORT |
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Personal Stories Selvin Joynarid Perez was standing under the awning of his small house on a bluff overlooking the Choluteca River early Saturday morning, keeping an uneasy watch on the torrential rain and rising waters below. Suddenly, the earth trembled, he said. He turned to run into the house to wake his wife and 3-year-old daughter. he never made it. "When I tries to go into the room where my wife and child were sleeping, the earth opened up," he said. Within seconds, more than 45 houses in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhoodslid down the bluff in an avelanche of earth and wood and tin roofing and human beings toward the roiling black waters below, Mr. Perez, 24, said. His wife, Maria, 25, and daughter, Kensi, were crushed to death in their beds. Today they are still buried in tons of debris above the river, along with at least 11 other people from the neighborhood. Some family members and survivors were picking over the jumbled boulders and pieces of houses, clawing at the earth in the hope of finding their loved one's remains. Mr. Perez, a mechanic, was laboring to repair a road leading to the disaster site so the government could bring in earthmovers. |