By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When massive flooding and mudslides hit Central America following Hurricane Stan, the staff of a Catholic AIDS clinic in San Salvador pitched in to help with emergency relief.

U.S. Maryknoll Sister Mary Annel, a medical doctor, and Maryknoll lay missionary Deborah Northern, both associated with the clinic, helped deliver food to communities outside San Salvador.

"The government's emergency system didn't reach all the people needing help, and many went to the churches, where they have more confidence that any goods donated will be given directly to them," Sister Annel said in an Oct. 11 e-mail.

In a separate e-mail the same day, Northern said the area near Lake Ilopango, outside San Salvador, was particularly hart hit by the rains and mudslides.

Apuyo, a community beside the lake, "is completely buried by dirt," she said. "Houses have dirt around them up to the second story and several feet of water inside them. What was the road is now about five feet higher, and what was the river is now a trickle, because the river bed is filled with dirt," she said.

Northern said some communities have neck-high or knee-high water, and she and Sister Annel wrote of crops and animals destroyed.

Stan hit the Mexican state of Veracruz Oct. 4 and quickly dissipated into a tropical storm. But the flooding and mudslides damaged homes, roadways, bridges and electric and phone systems. The heaviest damage occurred in Guatemala and El Salvador, but Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua also were hit by the storm.

The official death toll is more than 650 dead and some 400 missing, but emergency workers estimate 2,000 dead.

In Malacatan, Guatemala, about 20 miles from Tapachula, Mexico, Maryknoll Sister Rae Ann O'Neill wrote that she was without electricity for four days after Hurricane Stan.

The biggest problem now, she told Maryknoll officials in an e-mail Oct. 11, is the lack of bridges over many of the region's flooded rivers.

"We here in Malacatan are cut off," she said. "We could go north, but it means crossing the (flooded) rivers by foot."

The Cabuz River, one of the biggest, has a large bridge that was damaged during Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

"This time the entire bridge was twisted," she said, adding that the "government is not even estimating how long it will take to repair it."

Sister O'Neill said she and the other nuns have been busy preparing food for the people who are staying in shelters. She noted that everyone has been working together in the recovery efforts.

"All the churches are collaborating," she said. "It is really wonderful to see -- the police, the soldiers, the youth. People really respond to a crisis."

Maryknoll Sister Mary Ann Duffy, writing from San Marcos, Guatemala, also noted that people had banded together to respond to the crisis.

"There is hope for the future," she said, "but right now it is hard to begin again."

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops