Army helicopters and aid trucks are ferrying food and water to Guatemalan highland villages where thousands are packed into shelters after their homes were destroyed by mudslides last week.
An aerial view shows the destruction of a hamlet by a mudslide near Tacana, Guatemala
Service stations in the country's mountainous west were out of gasoline and fresh food supplies ran short, with swathes of farmland in the south still under water and roads cut off by banks of mud or wrecked bridges.
Vegetable plantations and chicken farms were destroyed by floods and the land looks from the air like a patchwork quilt of cocoa-coloured lakes.
Farmers were hampered by a lack of heavy machinery to help them clear roads.
The official toll from flooding and mudslides after Hurricane Stan last week is over 650 dead and some 400 missing, but emergency workers put the real number at around 2,000.
Although aid agencies worked with the army and government to stem the crisis, many fear the worst is still to come for tens of thousands of surviving Maya Indian peasants in the fir-covered mountains, now streaked with dozens of mudslides.
"At the moment we are just dealing with the emergency, but the worst will come afterward: epidemics, destroyed harvests, peasants who can't return to their land. And we can't do anything about that," said one air force pilot.