Seven people have died in a Caracas slum due to heavy rains from Tropical Storm Matthew, which brought fresh misery to a region were hundreds have been killed in flooding and landslides this year.
An unrelated freak storm in Haiti killed at least five survivors from the devastating January quake and wounded dozens as it blasted through the capital, Port-au-Prince, tearing down shabby tent homes, trees and power lines.
Citing local fire department officials, Venezuela’s VNA state news agency said Tropical Storm Matthew killed its seven victims on Friday in the Santa Ana de Antimano neighborhood after their home was flooded.
Caracas fire chief William Martinez said authorities also conducted preventive evictions in other high-risk areas.
Thousands of people had been evacuated elsewhere in Central America ahead of Matthew, which made landfall in a lightly populated area of northeastern Nicaragua, then headed west, dumping rain across much of northern Honduras.
Rosalba Silva of Nicaragua’s Meteorology Institute said that the storm struck further south than had been expected.
At 3am GMT yesterday, Matthew’s center was located inland about 130km east-southeast of the coastal city of La Ceiba, the US National Hurricane Center said. It packed top winds of 85kph.
The storm was moving west-northwest at 24kph.
There have been no reports of victims or serious damage in Honduras, though the Honduran government expanded a red alert nationwide because Matthew threatened all 18 departments.
“This is a new threat. Tropical Storm Matthew has entered the territory, and we predict heavy rains throughout the country,” Honduran President Porfirio Lobo told reporters.
Randolfo Funez of the national emergency commission pointed to high water levels in rivers, noting that the soil was highly saturated after frequent rains since May.
About 10,000 Miskito Indians living on the Caribbean coast were evacuated ahead of the storm, Nicaraguan civil defense chief Mario Perezcassar said.
“Torrential rains will be the biggest threat for the next few days,” the National Hurricane Center said.
The eye of the storm was forecast to move across Honduras yesterday and today, reaching Belize and Guatemala late yesterday and today.
Matthew is a large storm, with tropical force storm winds extending outward up to 280km to the north of the center, the center said.
It was expected to produce total rain accumulations of 15cm to 25cm over portions of Honduras, Nicaragua, southern Belize and Guatemala, with up to 38cm in isolated areas.
“These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides,” the center warned.
The storm was expected to weaken and lose its tropical storm status by today.
Central America is in the midst of one of the most intense rainy seasons in the past 60 years, with flooding and landslides that have killed more than 300 people and caused serious damage in recent months.
The storm was expected to approach Belize’s coast later yesterday and the country placed its entire coastline on a tropical storm watch.
Since the arrival of Tropical Storm Agatha in late May, heavy rain has swamped the region.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has declared a “state of national emergency” due to the heavy rain and flooding, which has killed at least 36 people, left some 40 people missing, forced the evacuation of about 11,500 people and caused US$1.5 billion in damage.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Julia formed out in the eastern Atlantic with maximum sustained winds of 130kph. It was expected to become a tropical storm today.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS