Hurricane Iota yesterday was barreling toward Honduras, weakened in strength, but still threatening to deliver more drenching rains and fierce winds to areas devastated by a powerful storm just two weeks ago.
Authorities rushed to evacuate thousands of people from coastal areas of Nicaragua and Honduras, in the immediate path of the storm.
The weather system has already left one person dead after sweeping the Colombian Caribbean island of Providencia, where it caused widespread damage.
Photo: AFP
Forecasters at the US National Hurricane Center warned of “life-threatening storm surge, catastrophic winds, flash flooding, and landslides” in Central America.
Iota had reached Category 5 status when it made landfall in Nicaragua on Monday.
Hurricanes of that force destroy homes and wreck power supplies, and most of the affected area is “uninhabitable for weeks or months,” the center said.
By Monday evening it had dropped to Category 4 and by early yesterday it was packing sustained winds of 210kph.
The center forecasts Iota to weaken rapidly as it moves further inland and to dissipate over Central America by today.
Providencia Police Chief Colonel John Fredy Sepulveda said that the local hospital had lost part of its roof and the territory of about 6,000 people was without power.
Hundreds of people living in Nicaragua’s coastal communities near the city of Bilwi were still waiting to be evacuated on Monday after enduring the last devastating storm to hit the territory just weeks earlier.
“With Hurricane Eta we didn’t get out, but this one is more dangerous,” said Marisol Ingram, whose wooden home was badly damaged by Eta and was at risk of being swept away by Iota.
Eta made landfall in the same area as a Category 4 hurricane earlier this month before easing to a tropical storm, bringing widespread flooding and landslides that left 200 people dead.
The Atlantic Ocean has experienced a record storm season this year, with 30 named storms and 13 hurricanes. Warmer seas caused by climate change are making hurricanes stronger for longer after landfall, scientists have said.
Shelters in Nicaragua, already stretched by those made homeless by Eta, were being overwhelmed by new arrivals, said Eufemia Hernandez, coordinator of a center at Uraccan University.
In Bilwi, residents spent Monday desperately trying to secure the roofs of flimsy wooden homes.
“The wind is too strong, it took everything, the roof and the wooden windows of my house,” said Jessi Urbina, a resident of the El Muelle neighborhood in Bilwi.
Prinsila Glaso, 80, said that her community south of Bilwi had been “destroyed” in the wake of Eta and that Iota would likely leave little behind.
“I haven’t eaten. I don’t know where I’m going to sleep here. I’m very sad,” she said.
Other residents said that the wind blew the roofs off houses “like they were made of cardboard.”
El Salvador declared a “red alert” ahead of the hurricane’s projected path through Central America. Neighboring Guatemala, with vast areas still recovering from Eta, was also on high alert.
The center warned that Iota would dump up to 500mm of rain on Honduras, northern Nicaragua, southeast Guatemala and southern Belize, with isolated totals of up to 760mm.
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