Central America counts Iota’s cost
TEGUCIGALPA: Storm Iota unleashed devastating flooding in areas already waterlogged with rain yesterday, forcing hundreds of thousands of people across Central America to flee their homes as scenes of destruction dotted the already impoverished region.
Authorities confirmed more than 30 dead by yesterday, and the death toll is expected to keep rising as rescuers reach more isolated communities and more damage is documented.
While villages from northern Colombia to southern Mexico have experienced record rainfall leading to swollen rivers and sudden mudslides, cities like Honduran industrial hub San Pedro Sula have also been hit hard.
Viral video yesterday showed the city’s airport completely flooded, with jetways looking more like docks and nearby tree tops barely visible, all of it smothered by muddy water.
The strongest storm on record ever to hit Nicaragua, Iota struck the coast late on Monday (local time), unleashing Category 5 magnitude winds and inundating lowlying areas still reeling from the impact two weeks ago of Eta, another major hurricane.
While Iota had largely dissipated over El Salvador yesterday, authorities in Nicaragua and Honduras were still battling to cope with the fallout from days of heavy rainfall.
The majority of the victims are in Nicaragua, where authorities say a mother and her four children were swept away by a river that overflowed its banks. A landslide in the north of the country killed at least eight people and many more were missing.
In Honduras, five members of a family, including three children, were buried alive after a landslide swept away their home in the western department of Ocotepeque near the border with El Salvador and Guatemala, according to police.
Karen Valladares, the head of Honduras’ FONAMIH migrants agency, warned that the storms’ accumulated devastation “will accelerate” local migration to the US over the next few months.
Some 160,000 Nicaraguans and 70,000 Hondurans have been forced to flee to shelters.
Despite the dissolution of Iota, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said the storm’s remnants could trigger more flooding and mudslides across Central America today.