Deadly Eta drenches Central America
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras— The rain-heavy remnants of Hurricane Eta flooded homes from Panama to Guatemala on Thursday as the death toll across Central America rose to 57, and aid organizations warned the flooding and mud slides were creating a slow-moving humanitarian disaster across the region.
The storm that hit Nicaragua as a mighty Category 4 hurricane 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.
Guatemalan authorities reported four dead Thursday, adding to13 victims in Honduras and two in Nicaragua. Panamanian authorities reported eight missing.
Two children died when their home collapsed under heavy rains in the central Guatemalan department of Quiche, local firefighters said. A third person also died in Quiche, but details weren’t immediately available.
Giammattei confirmed a fourth death in a landslide in Chinautla north of the capital Wednesday night.
On Thursday, he said on local radio that 60 percent of the eastern city of Puerto Barrios was flooded and that 48 more hours of rain were expected. Authorities reported nearly 100 homes damaged by flooding and landslides in Guatemala.
Honduras’ national police said Thursday that six more bodies had been found, bringing the 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. Two boys ages 8 and 11 died in another mudslide in the township of El Nispero.
Earlier, residents found the body of a girl buried in a landslide Wednesday in mountains outside the northern coastal city of Tela. In the same area, a large landslide buried a homewith amother and two children inside it, according to Honduras Fire Department spokesman Oscar Triminio.
Triminio said a 2-year-old girl was killed in the Santa Barbara department when she and her mother were swept away by floodwaters. The mother survived.
Dozens of residents of a neighborhood of the northern city of San Pedro Sula had to abandon their homes at 4 a.m. Thursday when water from the Chamelecon River arrived at their doorsteps.
Honduran officials earlier reported that a 12-year-old girl died in a mudslide, and a 15-year-old boy drowned trying to cross a rain-swollen river.
Marvin Aparicio of Honduras’ emergency management agency said Wednesday that some 457 homes had been damaged, mostly by floodwaters. Therewere 41communities cut off by washed-out roads, and nine bridges in the country were wiped out by swollen rivers
Among those rescued were Karen Patricia Serrano, her husband and five children. Their home was flooded with waters from the Lancetilla River, and they had been in a shelter in the northern city of Tela since Monday.
“We lost everything,” the 32year-old woman said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I even lost my little animals,” she said, referring to her chickens, cats and dogs.