Mexico City, Nov. 18, (dpa/GNA) – Hurricane Iota was on Tuesday streaking across Central America as a weakened tropical storm, with at least five people reported to have been killed in the region and extensive destruction in some areas.
Iota’s sustained wind speed fell from 250 kilometres per hour (km/h) on Monday night, when it struck Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast as a Category 4 hurricane, to 105 km/h, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said.
“The storm will move farther inland across northern Nicaragua today, and move across southern Honduras tonight before dissipating near El Salvador early Wednesday,” the statement added.
One person was killed and another went missing in the Panamanian indigenous community of Ngabe-Bugle, local media quoted official sources as saying.
In Honduras, a child was killed in the community of Brus Laguna in the east of the country, indigenous leader Newin Solano told television news programme Hoy Mismo.
The daily La Prensa reported the deaths of two children who were believed to have drowned in Nicaragua’s Carazo department, while Colombian President Ivan Duque confirmed one death in the archipelago of San Andres and Providencia.
Wind gusts felled trees and electricity posts and tore off roofs in the Nicaraguan city of Puerto Cabezas, said Guillermo Gonzalez, director of the national disaster management agency, Sinapred. Telecommunications services were disrupted in the area.
The Nicaraguan government mobilized 9,000 soldiers and 8,600 police to handle the emergency. More than 40,000 people had previously been evacuated to protect them from flooding and landslides.
Iota also wreaked havoc in the Colombian archipelago of San Andres and Providencia, destroying precariously built houses and flooding streets.
About 98 per cent of the infrastructure was damaged in Providencia, where more than 5,000 families “lost it all,” television news programme Noticentro 1 CM& reported.
“The island [of Providencia] was destroyed. There is a lot of anguish, there is no food, people have nothing,” Yudis Gallego, head of the San Andres hospital, was quoted by broadcaster Caracol as saying.
Duque visited the archipelago, where the navy was sending three vessels to bring humanitarian aid.
Twenty-five of Colombia’s 32 departments were hit by heavy rains. More than 1,000 houses were damaged in the Atlantico department, while more than 500 people were evacuated in the city of Cartagena, according to Noticentro 1 CM&.
Powerful winds were reported also in Honduras, where high waves lashed the coast and water levels in rivers rose. The authorities said that 14,000 families had been evacuated.
In El Salvador, the authorities started mobilizing food trucks for areas that could be affected.
Iota came just two weeks after hurricane Eta struck the region, submerging thousands of homes and killing at least 150 people.
The storm is already the 30th this year that has been strong enough to be given a name – the previous Atlantic record was 28.
The season lasts from June to November.
So many strong storms have formed that the 21 names provided for them this year have long since been used up. Meteorologists therefore switched to the Greek alphabet for the first time in 15 years.
GNA