Remnants of Hurricane Eta drench Central America; at least 57 dead
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) — The rain-heavy remnants of Hurricane Eta flooded homes from Panama to Guatemala Thursday as the death toll across Central America rose to 57, and aid organizations warned the flooding and mudslides were creating a slow-moving humanitarian disaster across the region.
The storm that hit Nicaragua as a mighty Category 4 hurricane on Tuesday had become more of a vast tropical rainstorm, but it was advancing so slowly and dumping so much rain that much of Central America remained on high alert. Forecasters said the now-tropical depression was expected to regather and head toward Cuba and possibly the Gulf of Mexico by early next week.
On Thursday afternoon, Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei said a water-soaked mountainside in the central part of the country had slid down onto the town of San Cristobal Verapaz, burying homes and leaving at least 25 dead.
Two other slides in Huehuetenango had killed at least 12
more, he said. Earlier Thursday, five others had been killed in smaller
slides in Guatemala.
Giammattei said on that 60% of the eastern city of Puerto Barrios was flooded and 48 more hours of rain was expected.
Guatemala’s toll was on top of 13 victims in Honduras and two in Nicaragua. Panamanian authorities reported eight missing.
Eta
had sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph) and was moving north-northwest
at 8 mph (13 kph) Thursday. It was centered 65 miles (100 kilometers)
west-northwest of La Ceiba, Honduras.
In Honduras, National Police
said Thursday that six more bodies had been found, bringing that
country’s toll to 13. The bodies of two adults and two children were
found after excavations in a mudslide that occurred Wednesday in the
township of Gualala, and two boys aged 8 and 11 died in another mudslide
in El Níspero.
Earlier, residents found the body of a girl buried
in a landslide Wednesday in mountains outside the north coast city of
Tela. In the same area, a landslide buried a home with a mother and two
children inside it, according to Honduras Fire Department spokesman
Óscar Triminio. He said there was also a 2-year-old girl killed in Santa
Barbara department when she was swept away by floodwaters.
Hundreds
of residents of San Pedro Sula neighborhoods had to abandon their homes
before dawn Thursday when water from the Chamelecon river arrived at
their doorsteps.
Miguel Angel Beltran, a security guard from the
city’s Planeta neighborhood, said his district was lost and many people
were missing or drowned.
“We rescued my brothers, all the family
from a balcony, a three-story building,” he said. “How is it possible
that a government has done nothing to warn people.”
His family
lost everything and had nowhere to go, he said. The few boats rescuing
people had no motors and struggled against the current, he said.
Marvin Aparicio of Honduras’ emergency management agency said 41 communities have been cut off by washed out roads.
Luis
Alonso Salas, a 45-year-old construction worker, stood on high ground
at a gas station where people who fled their homes picked over a pile of
donated clothing.
“It was terrible, I lost my whole house, I
couldn’t take anything,” he said. At 1 a.m. water was up to his neck. He
said others in his neighborhood were still waiting for rescuers in
boats from atop their roofs.
Maite Matheu, country director for
the international humanitarian organization CARE, said Thursday that
some 2 million Hondurans could be directly impacted by the storm.
“The
situation that we are seeing today is very, very alarming,” she said.
“Mainly the people and families that need to be evacuated right now.
There are dozens of families in some towns in the Sula valley who are on
their roofs and are asking to be evacuated.”
She said Honduras’ government did not have the capacity to rescue people.
Giammattei,
Guatemala’s president, said his Honduran counterpart Juan Orlando
Hernández requested help, but that blocked roads made it impossible to
do so.
Matheu said her organization was helping gather information
about the most pressing needs across Honduras. The food supply was a
real concern, she said. The country’s road network is badly damaged,
airports were closed and much of the Sula valley, the country’s most
agriculturally productive, was flooded.
“The impact on crops is
going to be enormous,” Matheu said. The storm’s impact would only
increase the pressure on a desperate population to migrate, she added.
In
Panama, at least eight people were reported missing after flooding and
landslides in the province of Chiriqui, which borders Costa Rica.
The
U.S. National Hurricane Center forecast that parts of Nicaragua and
Honduras could receive 15 to 25 inches (380 to 635 millimeters) of rain,
with 40 inches (1,000 millimeters) possible in some isolated parts.
When
what’s left of the storm wobbles back into the Caribbean it will regain
some strength and become a tropical storm again, forecasts show.
And
then Eta is predicted to slowly move toward Cuba and Florida, or at
least close enough to Florida for forecasters to warn of 7 inches of
rain for South Florida in the next five to seven days. And next week,
Eta could even move into the Gulf of Mexico.
“Whatever comes out
(of Central America) is going to linger awhile,” said Colorado State
University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. “I’m not convinced we’re
done with Eta.”
That’s because what’s left of Eta still has spin,
which is hard to kill off, and that should help it reform, said NOAA
hurricane and climate scientist Jim Kossin.
Once it reforms and heads toward Cuba, it could meander in the area for awhile.
“The winds aren’t going to be the problem. The rains are going to be the problem,” Klotzbach said.
Eta
will be so big, wet and messy that it doesn’t have to make landfall in
already rain-soaked South Florida to cause a mess, Klotzbach said.
“Slow-moving sprawling ugly tropical storms can certainly pack a precipitation wallop even if it doesn’t make landfall,” Klotzbach said.
Pérez D. reported from Guatemala City. Associated Press writers Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Juan Zamorano in Panama City, Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.