At least 124 people have died in flooding and landslides across El Salvador following days of heavy rain, the government has said.
The worst affected areas are in the capital San Salvador and central San Vicente province.
Hundreds of soldiers, police and residents dug through rock and debris in the San Vicente town of Verapaz looking for 60 people feared missing in a mudslide which struck before dawn yesterday.
Almost 7,000 people saw their homes damaged by landslides or cut off by floodwaters following three days of downpours from a low-pressure system indirectly related to Hurricane Ida, which brushed Mexico's Cancun resort yesterday before steaming into the Gulf of Mexico.
President Mauricio Funes declared a national emergency and said he would work with the United Nations to evaluate the extent of the damage.
"The images that we have seen today are of a devastated country," Funes said. He called the damages incalculable.
El Salvador's Civil Protection agency raised the death toll to 124 late yesterday, with another 60 people missing.
Some of the worst damage was in Verapaz, where mudslides covered cars and boulders two yards wide blocked streets.
The rain loosened a flow of mud and rocks that descended from the nearby Chichontepec volcano and buried homes and streets in Verapaz, a town of about 3,000 located 50 kilometres east of San Salvador, the capital.
Amid a persistent drizzle, rescuers dug frantically for survivors with shovels and even their bare hands. But the search was made difficult by collapsed walls, boulders and downed power lines that blocked heavy machinery.
San Vicente Governor Manuel Castellanos said workers were struggling to clear roadways and power and water service had been knocked out. At least 300 houses were flooded when a river in Verapaz overflowed its banks, Lopez Mendoza said.
Hurricane Ida's presence in the western Caribbean may have played a role in drawing a Pacific low-pressure system toward El Salvador, causing the rains, said Dave Roberts, a Navy hurricane specialist at the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
He added, however, that "if there were deaths associated with this rainfall amount in El Salvador, I would not link it to Ida."