Guatemala Landslide Death Toll Approaches 200, Officials Say They Warned Of Danger

At least 192 are confirmed dead and hundreds more are missing following a landslide outside of Guatemala City on October 1, 2015. Around 125 homes were buried in town of El Cambray, in the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula, following days of intense rain that loosened the soil on a nearby hillside.

What started as a mission to save survivors trapped in the ruble has become a solemn effort to recover the corpses of victims. Local officials have had to set up a makeshift morgue, and the Red Cross is asking for donations of dry ice, CNN reports.

Images of the aftermath show workers excavating the buried city with heavy machinery, including over a dozen backhoes, excavators, and dump trucks. El Cambray has been declared uninhabitable by Guatemala's National Disaster Reduction Commission (Conred), the BBC reports.

"That's not true. No one came, no one brought anything, no one said anything," Sonia Hernandez, 26, told the AP. "Apparently the mayor was advised, but he didn't have the dignity to come and tell us the risk we were running."

An estimated 300,000 Guatemalans live in disaster-prone areas like El Cambray, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune. Conred director Alejandro Maldonado told the AP that residents around Guatemala City were still at risk.

"What happened in Cambray is just a tragic case of what could potentially happen throughout the city," he said.

It is unclear if government officials offered the residents assistance to relocate in 2009 before the mudslide. Survivors of the disaster are calling on government officials to help them find new housing.