HUAUCHINANGO, Mexico (AFP) — Standing near the lifeless body of her sister, Rosalia Ortega was grateful to have found her in the river of mud that suddenly swept away her house as torrential rains pounded her Mexican mountain town.

At least 47 people have died since Thursday as floods have wreaked a trail of destruction in the hardest-hit states of Hidalgo, Puebla, Queretaro and Veracruz.

“We’re sad, but at least we’re going to give her a Christian burial,” Ortega, 76, told Agence France-Presse in the town of Huauchinango, in Puebla, a state east of Mexico City that according to official reports saw nine deaths and substantial damage.

The disaster zone is the Sierra Madre Oriental, a mountain range that runs parallel to Mexico’s east coast and is dotted with villages where telecommunications and other services have yet to be restored.

On Thursday, well after dark, a rain-swollen mountain river overflowed its banks in Huauchinango and within minutes robbed local residents of their homes and, in some cases, their loved ones.

That’s what happened to Maria Salas, a 49-year-old cook sheltering from the rain with an umbrella, watching two soldiers guarding the entrance to her neighborhood.

Salas lost five relatives when their house collapsed, and her own home was destroyed by a landslide.

“I can’t get my belongings, I can’t sleep there,” she said. “I have nothing.”

The grieving families are struggling to pay for funerals and, if anything is left over, to recover something from lost or damaged homes.

Huauchinango, with 100,000 residents, is one of the largest communities in the disaster zone and one of a very few that could be accessed Saturday.

The floodwaters swept away everything in their path, forming heavy rivers of mud that even rendered intact homes unusable.

“It was knee-deep,” says Petra Rodriguez, a 40-year-old domestic worker whose house was surrounded by water on both sides.

She, her husband and two sons managed to escape, holding hands so that if the water took one of them, “it would take us all,” she said.