Recovery after the Guatemalan Mudslide that erased part of  the town of Santa Catarina Pinula last week has uncovered 237 bodies so far from the mountains of mud and debris in the mudslide created from heavy rainfall.

Backhoes continued to remove thousands of tons of dirt from the acres-wide mudflow in the neighborhood of Cambray, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, with very little hope of finding anyone alive.

Officials have reported that many other people are still missing.  

Several hundred people were being housed in shelters run by the local government National Disaster Reduction Commission known as Conred.

The agency has said it issued a number of warnings about the dangers of living on the base of this mountain area. Officials this week declared the area uninhabitable.

Manuel Pocasangre, the communications director for the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula said state employees in recent years had gone door-to-door to talk to people about the risks of where they lived even in the last year.  

Stating that he had warned Mayor Tono Coro of the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula that the river was eating away at the base of the steep hill. “What we know is that people were conscious about the risk they were taking,” Pocasangre said Wednesday.  

Maldonado acknowledged there are many neighborhoods like Cambray in and around Guatemala City that are at risk of flooding or mudslides

The country’s prosecutor’s office has announced an investigation of the matter.