PAPALLACTA, Ecuador - Days of pounding rain across Ecuador flooded rivers and triggered massive landslides that left at least 38 people dead and forced thousands from their homes, authorities said. The government declared a state of emergency in four Amazon provinces to channel resources to areas devastated by the storms. Thirty people were killed when an avalanche of mud and rocks destroyed a shelter where they had stopped to rest on Monday last week on their way to the town of Papallacta 50 kms east of the capital. The motorists had been stranded on a highway blocked by landslides. Another six people died in mudslides near Papallacta, and two others drowned farther east in the Amazon region as rivers swelled from five days of torrential rains, the Red Cross said. Another 13 people were missing across Ecuador.

The Civil Defense Agency, a government relief body, reported 30 people killed, 20 missing and thousands affected by storms nationwide. About 2,000 people have been evacuated from their houses and thousands more have sustained crop damage in the Amazon since the storms began. Meteorologists said rains will continue throughout June and July but with less intensity. Authorities said rivers had started to return to normal levels. Rescue groups around Papallacta struggled in vain to recover bodies from the mud with shovels, pickaxes and hoes. Heavy machinery was unable to plow through the mud.

„We‘ll never really know how many there were. Given the amount of earth, rocks and mud in the area, we think many of the cadavers won‘t be recovered,“ a Red Cross director, Roddy Camino, said. The highway linking Ecuador‘s highlands to the Amazon was blocked last Wednesday by the Papallacta landslide and 11 others in the area. They ripped through the country‘s only oil pipeline on Monday, halting the transport of crude. Local villagers sought some kind of explanation for their tragedy.

„It always rains here, but we‘ve never had so many deaths,“ said Rodolfo Guagrilla, who, like his few neighbors, had abandoned his house „until the earth and sky calm down“. Reuters