Otto batters Costa Rica, Nicaragua
DOUBLE BLOW:
After storm lands in Central America, quake strikes region
HURRICANE Otto battered Nicaragua and Costa Rica with powerful winds and torrential rains yesterday, damaging homes, forcing thousands to evacuate and causing an undetermined number of deaths.
The hurricane, which weakened after hitting the southeastern coast of Nicaragua, became a tropical storm by early yesterday, the United States National Hurricane Centre said, as dangerous flooding continued in both countries.
In Costa Rica, President Luis Guillermo Solis said there had been a number of deaths, but was too early to say how many had died.
“I regret to inform you ... that there are people dead and missing,” Solis told a news conference.
Otto, the seventh Atlantic hurricane of the season, landed north of San Juan de Nicaragua as a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, the Miamibased hurricane centre said.
Thousands of people were evacuated from its path. It weakened to a tropical storm, with top sustained winds of 113kph, about 89km northwest of Liberia, Costa Rica.
Soon after the storm landed, a 7 Magnitude quake struck 149km southwest of Puerto Triunfo, El Salvador, at a depth of 10km, the US Geological Survey said.
There were no reports of major damage from the quake in El Salvador, but local emergency services ordered the coastal population to withdraw up to 1km from the shore.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared a state of emergency because of the storm and the quake, his spokesman and wife, Rosario Murillo, said.
Nicaraguan civil protection officials said the hurricane, which was moving west at 21kph, damaged homes and telephone lines but had not reported any victims.
In the city here at Nicaragua’s southeastern Mosquito Coast, rainfall began in the morning. Hundreds were moved to storm shelters by Thursday evening.
“We left because we don’t want to die. We love our lives,” said 53-yearold Carmen Alvarado, who was hunkering down in a school here.
She was among the 206 people evacuated from the coastal community of El Bluff near here. Reuters