Hurricane Felix slammed into Nicaragua’s Miskito Coast as a record-setting category-five monster storm on Tuesday, whipping metal rooftops through the air like razors and forcing thousands to flee.
”The winds are horrible,” Red Cross official Claudio Vanegas said by phone from the Nicaraguan town of Puerto Cabezas shortly after Felix struck land nearby with winds of 260km/h. ”They send roofs flying through the air, so we aren’t going outside because it is too dangerous.”
Two people were reported dead in Puerto Cabezas. ”The situation is chaotic. Puerto Cabezas is being totally destroyed,” said Antonio Joya, a regional government official. ”I’m sure it is going to be a total disaster.”
Meanwhile, off Mexico’s Pacific coast, Hurricane Henriette bore down on upscale Cabo San Lucas, a resort popular with Hollywood stars and sports fishermen. The United States National Hurricane Centre said it had winds of 120km/h and that the eye would likely hit land on Tuesday afternoon.
Early on Tuesday, carloads of curious spectators passed by the Cabo San Lucas marina, where waves crashed into rock barriers, sending plumes of white water 6m into the air. Catamarans crashed against their moorings, and officials were lashing docks together to try to keep them from washing out to sea. Palm trees bent over in the wind.
Felix landed around dawn at Punta Gorda, 40km north of Puerto Cabezas, only two weeks after Hurricane Dean struck Mexico, further up the Caribbean coast.
Never before in recorded hurricane history have two category-five Atlantic hurricanes made landfall in the same year. Only 31 category-five storms have been seen in the Atlantic since record-keeping began in 1886, including eight in the past five seasons.
Henriette claimed seven lives even before it strengthened into a hurricane. One woman drowned in high surf in Cabo San Lucas on Monday, and the storm caused flooding and landslides that killed six people in Acapulco.
At noon GMT on Tuesday, Henriette was centred 120km south-southeast of the Baja California peninsula. Strong winds were already pounding the beaches and rain fell in sheets. More than 100 residents spent the night in shelters.
Thousands evacuated
In Nicaragua’s remote north-east corner, more than 12 000 people were evacuated just ahead of Felix’s landfall, including from a local hospital, but some refused to leave vulnerable coastal communities, and distress calls were received from three boats with a total of 49 people on board, civil defence official Rogelio Flores said.
In neighbouring Honduras, 2 500 people were evacuated from the Bay Islands ahead of the storm, including hundreds of tourists.
Phones and power were out in much of the Miskito Coast, making it difficult to find out what was happening in the remote, swampy area where many people get around on canoes. Radio reports said a Catholic church in Puerto Cabezas was destroyed by winds.
Rogelio Perez, a local emergency official, said the army was preparing to fly over the area and assess damage. However, emergency officials said they had no immediate reports of victims, and that most people in low-lying areas had been moved to shelters on higher ground.
”Some refused to leave their homes, but most are safe,” Vanegas said.
The only path to safety for many of those Indians was up rivers and across lakes that are too shallow for regular boats, and the damaging winds and floods could wipe out their small crops of beans, rice, cassava and plantains.
Felix was projected to cut across central Honduras and Guatemala and then pass as a weakened tropical storm over Mexico’s Tehuantepec Peninsula.
Hurricane path
The storm was following a similar path to 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, a sluggish storm that stalled for a week over Central America, killing nearly 11 000 people and leaving more than 8 000 missing, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua.
The US National Hurricane Center said Felix could dump up to 30cm of rain in isolated parts of northern Honduras and north-eastern Nicaragua, possibly bringing flash floods and mudslides. In the highland capital of Tegucigalpa, more than 160km inland, authorities cleared vendors from markets prone to flooding.
In Honduras’s seaside resort of La Ceiba, residents spent the night reinforcing flimsy house walls with plywood and sandbags.
”It’s going to be strong, but we have faith that Christ will protect us,” said 37-year-old housewife Sandra Hernandez, watching satellite images of the storm on television.
Just before Hurricane Felix hit, Grupo Taca Airlines airlifted tourists from the Honduran island of Roatan, popular for its pristine reefs and diving resorts, while a US Chinook helicopter evacuated 19 Americans, including tourists and members of US Joint Task Force-Bravo who were visiting the island, according to the US Southern Command.
Bob Shearer (54) said he was disappointed his family’s scuba-diving trip to Roatan was cut short. ”I only got seven dives in. I hope they didn’t jump the gun too soon,” he said, waiting for a flight home to Butler, Pennsylvania. — Sapa-AP