Mexico City, Nov. 19, (dpa/GNA) – The powerful storm Iota has claimed more than 20 lives as it swept over parts of Central and South America, leaving devastation in its wake.
At least 16 people were killed in Nicaragua, Vice President Rosario Murillo said. They included seven people whose houses were hit by a landslide in the country’s central-northern Matagalpa region on Tuesday.
Those victims were living in a risk area, but they had previously refused to move, Murillo said.
The death toll also includes two victims in Colombia, one in El Salvador and one in Panama, according to official figures.
Another person was reported to have been killed in Honduras, though the death has not been officially confirmed.
Unconfirmed media reports also spoke about the house of a five-member family being buried under a landslide in Ocotepeque in western Honduras.
Iota struck Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast on Monday as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 250 kilometres per hour. It later weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm.
The storm was on Wednesday dissipating over El Salvador, but it is still expected to bring rains to parts of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua and El Salvador through Thursday, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
“This rainfall will lead to significant, life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding, along with mudslides in areas of higher terrain,” the centre said. High waves were also expected to affect much of the Central American coast and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
Iota caused widespread damage in Nicaragua, where it destroyed homes and bridges, felled trees and electricity posts and disrupted telecommunications, especially around the city of Puerto Cabezas.
Murillo said that 160,000 people had been evacuated.
In northern Honduras, Iota worsened the damage that had already been caused by Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez said Hondurans had experienced “very difficult moments” but that the damage had not been as bad as expected.
On the Colombian island of Providencia, nearly the entire infrastructure was destroyed and thousands of families lost their homes.
President Ivan Duque’s government declared the archipelago of San Andres and Providencia a disaster area.
Heavy rains were reported in Colombia, with more than a dozen people dead or missing.
US president-elect Joe Biden pointed to the link between hurricanes and climate change.
“I’m keeping in my prayers all of our friends and neighbors in Hurricane Iota’s path and those impacted by Hurricane Eta across Central America,” he tweeted.
“The increasing frequency of these powerful storms is another reason that fighting climate change will be one of my top priorities,” he added.
A low pressure area could now appear in the south-western Caribbean, the Hurricane Center warned.
“Regardless of tropical cyclone formation, areas of heavy rain are possible during the next several days from Nicaragua southward across Central America and into Colombia. These rains could cause new flooding concerns, especially across previously inundated areas,” it said.
Hurricane Eta had previously killed at least 174 people and left about 100 missing in Central America.
Iota is already the 30th storm this year that has been strong enough to be given a name – the previous Atlantic record was 28.
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