Prior to the disaster of Hurricane Stan in which over 400 persons from Panabaj and nearby Tzanchaj were killed or left missing, the town's population had numbered over 3,000, though a census has not been taken since.
International media attention forced the Guatemalan government to close the base and declare Santiago Atitlán and its environs, which include Panabaj and the bordering town of Tzanchaj, a "military-free zone."
Relief provision was hampered by a large number of major disasters in 2005, in particular by diversion of resources to deal with a severe earthquake in Pakistan that occurred just a few days after the mudslide [citation needed].
After the disaster, the mayor of Santiago Atitlán requested that Panabaj be declared a cemetery, not to be reinhabited; however, most of the townspeople returned, and the majority of the houses and stores were rebuilt for occupation by their original residents.
In addition to the crops planted on the massive now-solidified mud deposit, the highly fertile volcanic soil—as is the soil in most parts of Guatemala—has since sprouted grass, weeds and verdure, leaving little visual evidence that a mudslide took place, other than the occasional deep gulleys that were gouged out by rain water within weeks of the deluge when the mud was still soft, leaving the appearance now of thousands of years of erosion.