PANABAJ, Guatemala - A river of mud and boulders swept over this village of about 3,500 people when Tropical Storm Stan dumped torrential rains on a nearby mountainside in the early morning of Oct. 5.

"The sound (of the mudslide) was like a helicopter coming at 2:00 a.m.," says Lidia Ruth Recinos de Letona, as she recalls lying in bed on that dark and rainy night. "Then at 4 a.m., we heard the sound, and it was noisy like an earthquake."

Lidia and her husband Felipe Noé Letona Estrada saw the backyard flowing with mud, and they knew they were in a