Mexico City, Nov. 4, (dpa/GNA) – Hurricane Eta lashed the Nicaraguan coast on Tuesday, causing significant damage and reportedly claiming at least two lives, one of them in neighbouring Honduras.
The centre of the hurricane touched ground at 26 kilometres south of Puerto Cabezas with winds of 220 kilometres per hour, the civil protection agency Sinapred said.
It was moving westwards at a speed of 7 kilometres per hour and was expected to turn north-west.
Eta was described by the US National Hurricane Center as “extremely dangerous.” It has been designated as a category-4 storm, the second-most severe level on the scale.
Heavy rains triggered a landslide on a mine in Bonanza in north-eastern Nicaragua, where at least one miner was killed and another went missing, the public television channel TN8 reported.
Classes were suspended in 1,700 Nicaraguan schools, the government was quoted as saying.
About 30,000 people were evacuated from areas at risk in coastal municipalities, according to Sinapred.
The hurricane felled trees and electricity posts, ripped off roofs and made rivers overflow their banks in the north of the country. Damage to some houses and power cuts were also reported.
Flooding and landslides were meanwhile reported in Honduras, where about 390 people were evacuated.
A 13-year-old girl was killed when a wall of her home collapsed on her bed in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, civil protection authorities said. It was thought likely that the accident was caused by a landslide sparked by Eta.
Some 30 Honduran communities were left isolated after bridges collapsed in La Florida in the west, according to daily La Prensa.
“It is fundamental that we all adopt the necessary preventive measures to save our lives,” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a video published on his Twitter account.
The hurricane was expected to continue delivering rains even as it lost force.
“Rapid weakening should occur as the center moves inland tonight and Wednesday,” according to the US National Hurricane Center.
The hurricane also brought winds and knocked over trees in the Colombian archipelago of San Andres and Providencia. In El Salvador, the government ordered the closure of schools and universities.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN teams in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala were in touch and supporting the local authorities.
Central America is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters due to its generally poor infrastructure.
In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed at least 9,000 people across the entire region, while 9,000 others went missing.
GNA