Thousands left homeless after ruinous storms
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Shelters for people whose homes were flooded or damaged by hurricanes Eta and Iota in Honduras are now so crowded that thousands of victims have taken refuge under highway overpasses or bridges.
The International Red Cross estimates that about 4.2 million people were affected by the backtoback Category 4 hurricanes this month in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Several hundred thousand are in shelters or informal camps across the region.
But nowhere are the evacuated victims piled up more densely than in the northern Honduras
city of San Pedro Sula, where some neighborhoods are still flooded. The evacuees say they fear that even when they are eventually allowed to return to their swamped neighborhoods, they will find everything gone.
Orlando Antonio Linares oversees a municipal shelter at a school in San Pedro Sula, where almost 500 hurricane victims have taken refuge. There are about 84 shelters across the city, holding as many 100,000 people.
“There is a shortage of everything,” Linares said, referring to water, food and medicine. “There is a shortage because, after these two hurricanes, the need is so great.”
The situation also reflects the difficulty of sheltering natural disaster victims amid the coronavirus pandemic. There is no room for social distancing at the school, and few people wear face masks.
Rebeca Diaz and Jose Alberto Murillo and their five children have been at the shelter since
Eta and then Iota flooded their neighborhood.
“We have been sleeping on the floor for two weeks,” said Murillo. “We have been forgotten.”
Still, there are those who are worse off. Former factory worker Jarlin Antonio Lorenzo said he couldn’t even find room at a shelter; instead, he and almost 500 others have camped out under a highway overpass on the outskirts of the city.
“People are dying of hunger here … the shelters are full,” he said.