LA GUAIRA, Venezuela -- Paratroopers patrolled a desolate sea of head-high mud and rubble Wednesday in a Venezuelan coastal area devastated by killer mudslides, while rescuers searched for survivors trapped in basements.
Defense Minister Raul Salazar said 6,400 troops were deployed through ghost towns in the Caribbean state of Vargas, as earthmovers plowed through tons of debris that buried up to 30,000 people in one of Latin America's worst mudslides.Salazar said about 140,000 people had been evacuated in a massive rescue air and sea rescue operation led by 13,000 troops, 5,000 volunteers, 40 helicopters and 16 warships.
Amid persistent looting, soldiers carrying semi-automatic weapons combed the moonscape while army helicopters dropped pamphlets warning those who remained behind to stay indoors at night.
"People have been arrested, we're doing a street by street patrol," Salazar told reporters. La Guaira mayor Lenin Marcano said 170 "delinquents, vandals and thieves" had been detained.
Those residents unwilling to leave said they set up vigilante groups armed with sticks and baseball bats to protect their belongings and were communicating at night by banging pots and pans to alert for the danger. They also lit bonfires to cover the sickening smell of rotting corpses.
"We've established an anti-looting squad. Some of us are armed, others use sticks and machetes," Quintin Teran said.
Six-month-old baby rescued alive
Occasional groups of firemen with search dogs scoured streets turned into junk yards with wrecked cars piled high. Street signs poked out at knee-level but some tall buildings were totally untouched by the deluge of mud and rocks that came crashing down from the Avila mountain range last week.
There were reports of a miracle rescue of a baby girl, embedded in the rock-hard mud, and of 18 people trapped in a basement in Caraballeda, six days after the tragedy.
Rescue worker Alfredo Calles, 18, said: "We're going to get in using ropes and get in through a window."
He said his group stumbled on a six-month old baby girl still alive. "She was buried up to the neck in mud, completely dehydrated. It's miracle that we found her."
With most bodies buried under several feet of hardened debris, the stench of death was the only way to spot them. "We dig where the stench is the strongest," he said.
Visible corpses were doused with lime and marked with a simple wooden cross because "there is no time to identify them".
But the fate of the thousands of bodies thought to be still buried was unclear. Venezuelan officials have said many of the worst affected areas of Vargas could be turned into parks.
In Central America last year, after Hurricane Mitch tore through the region killing some 9,000 people, Nicaraguan officials decided to turn the slopes of the Casita volcano, where a mudslide buried 2,500 people, into a memorial park.
International airport could reopen soon
With 23,000 homes destroyed and widespread damage to infrastructure, Venezuela, already battered by a persistent economic recession, was likely to face billions of dollars in clean-up costs and years of rebuilding.
The country's main international airport and Vargas' largest source of economic activity was shut to commercial traffic last Thursday. Salazar said it would probably reopen on Christmas day.
Some international flights were being diverted to regional airports, in particular Valencia, 100 miles to the west.
The worst-hit area was a 60-mile stretch of Vargas, a popular holiday area for middle-class residents of the capital Caracas, an hour's drive away and home to bustling beaches until the turquoise seas of the Caribbean were turned brown with mud.