There were children, pregnant women, old men and a blind boy helped by a relative. In all, hundreds of desperate people rushed on to the muddy field from every corner of this storm-ravaged town as a Mexican military helicopter hauling food and medical supplies roared to a landing, its rotors kicking up furious little wind gusts.
The arrival of the aircraft on Saturday afternoon marked the first delivery of urgently needed supplies to this remote farming town in the week since Tropical Storm Mitch marched savagely across Honduras, Nicaragua and other Central American nations. For days, it dumped drenching rains which washed out towns, bridges and vast stretches of road, isolating countless communities and creating logistical problems for aircraft crews trying to conduct relief and rescue operations.
"Until today, we had been cut off and living like rats, eating little bits of beans and tortillas," said Mr Sylvan Espinal (48), who stood amid the throng of onlookers which ringed the helicopter as troops and aid workers hurriedly unloaded bread, flour, pasta, sacks of rice and boxes of canned sardines. "Going hungry has been very hard on the young ones and the elderly. We can only hope these soldiers keep coming back."
Within minutes, the helicopter became airborne again and was skirting nearby mountain peaks en route to another hard-hit town, but not before its powerful downdraft had peeled the tin roof from a home near the field and sent debris spinning.
The task of reaching many of the areas battered by Mitch has been difficult, to say the least. The undertaking has posed overwhelming challenges to the thousands of troops and aid workers, who are trying to help this poor nation recover from the most devastating natural disaster to strike the region in decades.
During the hour-long helicopter mission - a flight which required tight landings to deliver provisions to three towns - the aircraft passed over a vast area of farmland that is now a sea of flood water in the southern state of Choluteca, one of the areas which suffered the greatest loss of life and property from the storm. Fallen trees and livestock carcasses littered the landscape.
In one town, the nave of a cathedral was blasted away, as if a freight train had plowed through it. Near the Choluteca River, people struggled to walk through waist-deep water; aboard the helicopter, a Honduran aid worker fought back tears.
Although increasing numbers of airborne relief missions are being carried out daily with the arrival of additional international assistance, military officials here say that ground conditions have made it impossible to land helicopters in many communities or to find places where residents could reach supply drops without risking their lives.
Last week, a Honduran military helicopter was nearly swept away by flood waters after it touched down near a river to distribute food to stranded storm survivors. In towns where flood levels have started to recede, helicopter crews have had difficulty finding places where the downdraft of their hovering aircraft would not inflict further damage on storm-weakened homes.
The relief and rescue operations have also been hampered by a shortage of fuel and the fact that downed telephone lines and a dearth of communications equipment have made it difficult to apportion fuel at staging areas throughout the country. There is also a great need for additional helicopters, but this should abate following the delivery of 32 more US aircraft. "Our only communication is by air," Capt Herman Valasquez said at a makeshift relief base in the Honduran town of Choluteca. Pointing to a nearby parking lot, he added: "You see all those trucks, they are full of food, but we do not have the helicopters to deliver it. What we have distributed is running out quickly."
This country of six million people bore the brunt of the storm, which dropped as much as six feet of rain in three days over some areas. President Carlos Flores Facusse has said that more than 6,000 people were killed, that more than 12,000 are missing, and that nearly two million lost their homes or were evacuated as flood waters closed in.
In the meantime, from dawn until darkness descends on Choluteca, which is still without electricity, cargo planes make repeated 25-minute flights between it and Tegucigalpa, the capital, delivering supplies that are then loaded on to helicopters. The smaller aircraft make as many as 10 relief runs a day to flood-isolated communities, depending on fuel availability.
At the Choluteca base, where an operations desk and a crude weather vane have been set up in high weeds, Mexican helicopter pilots, many of them exhausted, pored over maps trying to figure out how best to fly to affected towns.
Relief operations gained greater momentum during the weekend when an access road between Tegucigalpa and Choluteca was opened, and the Red Cross began trucking food to Choluteca. This was intended to feed about 1,000 families for 30 days, but Honduran aid stocks are running out.
Food supplies from the international relief organisation CARE are also being delivered by military aircraft, and chlorine tablets to purify water are on the way. "I look at the emergency phase (extending) four months if everything goes well," said Mr Scott Solberg, food security adviser for CARE in Honduras. He said "longer-term rehabilitation" will be needed because of the "incredible number of people who need food and . . . the need to re-establish their livelihood systems."