Reeling from back-to-back hurricanes, Central America focuses on saving lives with help from the United States
Seventeen days after Hurricane Eta and four days after Hurricane Iota, chaos still reigns in the Central American region, especially in the two hardest-hit countries, Honduras and Nicaragua, where millions of people lack food, water and shelter.
As of Thursday afternoon, emergency officials had reported at least 36 deaths directly caused by Iota: 16 in Honduras, two in Guatemala, 16 in Nicaragua, one in El Salvador and one in the Colombian archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia.
Eta alone claimed at least 227 lives.
The head of the U.S. Defense Department’s Southern Command in Miami, Adm. Craig Faller, told the Miami Herald that U.S. forces on the ground in Honduras carried out rescue missions after Hurricane Eta, but have not been able to do so yet in the aftermath of Iota.
‘“Our hearts and prayers go out to the people, our friends, that have been devastated by these backto-back hurricanes,” the admiral said.
The U.S. has had a military base, the Joint Task Force Bravo, with a team of about 700, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, for more than 20 years.
Those military forces responded to the crisis immediately after Eta, Faller said, working with the U.S. Agency for International Development. As soon as the weather conditions allowed for helicopters to fly, they carried out about 140 rescue missions and saved at least 320 lives in Honduras, Guatemala and Panama.
They have not been able to go out after Iota due to bad weather, but they hope to do so soon in Guatemala and Honduras.
Faller said the Defense Department has not received any requests for aid from Nicaragua, but that if that happens, the U.S. would help as well. But USAID has helped.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re in a situation where we have an autocratic leader like the one they have in Nicaragua and that we really have no military relations,” Faller said.
HONDURAS HOPES TO REBUILD SOON
Honduran President
Juan Orlando Hernández told people who are still waiting to be rescued on Thursday that help will arrive as soon as possible. Some areas, such as La Mosquitia rainforest, in the department of Gracias a Dios in the northeast edge of the country, can only be reached by air, so that has complicated operations.
To the most unfortunate victims, Hernández said: “To you, compatriot, if you lost everything, perhaps we are not going to give you back everything but we are going to give you a personal hygiene kit ... a bed, a small stove ... and also a water filter.”
He added that he wants all Hondurans to help clean the streets and repair their homes. “We are going to give you the paint for your house, but you paint it well for me,” he told them.
Hernández said he asked the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a regional body of the United Nations, to assess the damage and that he expects to receive a report about it in three weeks.
The Honduran chief executive said he plans to work with the Central American Integration System to coordinate a plan that allows the eight member countries to reactivate their economies and rebuild their infrastructure together, with the assistance of institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank and the In
ternational Monetary
Fund.
Hernández’s “dream,” he said, is that “by Christmas” there will already be a new Sula valley, in the most affected department of Cortés in the north, and people “will live with dignity again.”
‘THERE IS A LOT OF HUNGER’ IN NICARAGUA
Sergio Chow, a regional council member of the indigenous political party YATAMA, lives in the neighborhood of El Muelle in the Nicaraguan port city of Puerto Cabezas.
The Miskito leader survived Iota’s passing in his home, which is about 650 feet from the oceanfront. Only half of his residence still stands after the storm.
Chow’s neighbors weren’t so lucky.
“My neighbor’s house,
the whole neighborhood, the most humble houses, they practically collapsed,” he said. “The sea entered, practically a tsunami.”
He estimated the rushing waters were almost 10 feet high and receded only about 65 feet from his house.
“It did not reach me,” Chow, 46, said. “... [But] the coastal area is practically destroyed.” He mentioned the neighborhoods of El Cocal, Sandy Bay Sirpy, San Pedro, Libertad as some of the ones demolished by the winds, rains, and the storm surge from Iota.
For the residents of the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, home to many of Nicaragua’s indigenous communities, the ocean has long been a source of life, not destruction. The devastation of the coastal zones is worrisome for an economy sustained by the sea.
Thousands of indigenous workers in the Miskito Cays, a low-lying archipelago Iota pummeled, relied on the fishing economy, Chow told the Herald. Iota didn’t just wipe out their homes, but also their boats and fishing equipment such as trammel nets, engines and hooks. A local company that specialized in seafood and generated employment for many Puerto Cabezas dwellers was also destroyed.
“No one here works in something else,” he said. “Everyone works in the fishing industry.”
This isn’t just an obstacle to restoring the region’s economy, but also to immediate emergency relief. People have been going hungry in Puerto Cabezas and surrounding communities in the days following the major hurricane.
Many people caught their own food, but can’t do so after the storm blew their ships to land or lost their ships down rivers, lagoons, and the Caribbean. Hurricane Eta partially destroyed the port, the heart of the city, and Iota finished the job, potentially making it difficult for large industrial fishing boats and relief ships to dock. The large barge that carries trucks and vehicles back and forth through the Wawa Bum river to Puerto Cabezas, the only land access to the city, was swept away and grounded, Chow said.
Chow had around 4,000 córdobas, or approximately $114, left on Thursday morning. He went house by house and distributed the money to different families “so they can at least eat rice.”
“There is a lot of hunger,” he said. “There is a lot of hunger.”