GUATEMALA CITY — With food and water running out, governments in Central America and Mexico scrambled yesterday to reach isolated areas devastated by a week of intense rain, with survivors beginning to panic.

Mudslides and flooding following Hurricane Stan killed 277 people across the region, with Guatemala bearing the brunt of the disaster.

Officials pulled 67 bodies from a mountain of mud that buried several towns — including Sololá near Lake Atitlán, an area popular with tourists 100 miles west of the capital, Guatemala City, and expected to find many more although search efforts were hampered by continued rains.

Increasing fears yesterday was a strong earthquake that shuddered through Guatemala and El Salvador.

The quake caused a rain-damaged highway bridge to collapse in Guatemala and sent thousands of frightened Salvadoran residents into the streets.

There were no reports of injuries from the quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8.

The quake also forced officials to suspend their search for two coffee workers missing since the Ilamatepec volcano erupted a week ago west of the capital, San Salvador.

The earthquake struck before residents had even begun to recover from five days of heavy rains from Hurricane Stan, which made landfall on Tuesday in Mexico's Gulf Coast state of Veracruz before it weakened into a tropical depression.

"We need food, clothing, medicine and help," said Lucas Ajpus, a former firefighter coordinating rescue efforts in Santiago Atitlán, the Guatemalan city near landslides that hit four villages.

A total of 177 people have been confirmed killed in Guatemala, but Benedicto Giron, a spokesman for the National Agency for Disaster Reduction, said villagers reported "200 or 300 people buried."

In Pathulul, 30 miles away from Santiago Atitlán, creeks that normally stream down from the highlands had turned into raging rivers, cluttered with rocks, branches and chunks of debris.

Guatemalan officials organized an air-rescue squad of their own helicopters as well as those lent by the United States and neighboring Mexico, but poor weather prevented them from taking off until yesterday.

Residents and tourists in Panajachel, on the banks of Lake Atitlán, said they needed aid.

"Water is running out, food is running out and looters are coming now," said Stephanie Jolluck, 32, a businesswoman from Atlanta who was reached by telephone.

Jolluck, who has traveled to Guatemala for work since 1999, described watching rivers grow from their usual width of 6 feet to more than 50 feet.

In the western province of San Marcos, on the border with Mexico, residents cut off by floods have been pleading for help in telephone calls to radio stations.

Guatemalan President Oscar Berger said government workers with heavy machinery cleared fallen trees and dirt from a portion of the Interamerican Highway, allowing rescuers to reach isolated communities.

The country's important Pacific Coast highway remained impassable, however, after three bridges were washed out.

More than 270 communities have been affected by the floods and landslides, forcing the evacuation of more than 30,000 people, according to the country's disaster-management agency.

In El Salvador, the death toll rose yesterday to 67 after two people were buried in separate mudslides, said Cesar Marroquin of the National Emergency Committee.

"If they don't come and give us aid, we are going to die with our children in the middle of all this water," said Maria Elena Crotez, 44, who was waiting in line on a highway for bread distributed by Roman Catholic Church officials.

Crotez lost her home after a river 45 miles outside San Salvador overflowed, washing away everything in the area.

Nineteen people have died in Mexico; nine in Nicaragua; four in Honduras and one in Costa Rica.

Mexican President Vicente Fox said the Mexican navy had rescued 45 Guatemalans who were trapped by floodwaters just across the border. He promised to use rising oil profits to help storm victims.

Yesterday, floodwaters were receding, leaving homes full of mud, but forecasters predicted heavy rain for later this weekend.

Rescuers with emergency supplies of food and water can't reach more than 300,000 people in mountainous regions of Mexico's Chiapas state cut off by flooding and mudslides in the aftermath of Hurricane Stan, officials said.

"There're at least 300,000 people in the region who are not receiving any kind of help," said Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia. He said floods and mudslides had affected at least 1 million residents of his state.

"It's devastating. Much of the city is gone. There's hardly any food left. People are desperate," said Maripaz Herrera, the manager of the Hotel Kamico in Tapachula, a city of 400,000 on the border with Guatemala.

"We're running out of everything. This is the worst disaster we've had," she said in a telephone interview.

Information from Knight Ridder newspapers is included in this report.