Hurricane pounds El Salvador's coast
Hurricane Adrian slammed into El Salvador's coast today, President Tony Saca said, cutting off power and forcing officials to close schools and evacuate 14,000 people.
The hurricane hit land on a stretch of coast west of the capital, San Salvador, but the full force of the storm - the first recorded Pacific hurricane to strike the country - has yet to be felt there.
El Salvador declared an emergency as the unusual hurricane, the eastern Pacific's first named tropical storm of the season, washed out roads and unleashed heavy rains that forecasters said could cause devastating flooding.
"The hurricane has entered Salvadoran territory, and several things may now happen," Saca said. "This emergency situation isn't over yet."
Adrian was west of Puerto La Libertad, the beach resort and seafood centre closest to El Salvador's capital, San Salvador.
Streets in La Libertad were deserted as people sought refuge in their homes after power went out, rains sprayed across an increasingly agitated surf and waves pounded at the pier.
Earlier, Saca broadcast an appeal for his citizens to obey evacuation requests.
The region, where many people live in shacks clinging to sharp ravines, is particularly vulnerable to flooding and landslides. Hurricane Mitch, arriving from the Caribbean, killed at least 9,000 people in Central America.
Adrian is also a very unusual hurricane.
While some Atlantic storms, such as Mitch, have entered El Salvador after being sharply weakened by passing over Honduras, no other hurricane in modern records has hit El Salvador directly, according to Antonio Arenas, director of El Salvador's National Service of Territorial Studies, which monitors weather.
Most Pacific storms spawned off the Central American coast head towards the north west, roughly parallel to the coastline and then edge out to sea or veer inland farther north, in Mexico.
The US Hurricane Centre said the hurricane would probably weaken rapidly once it hit shore and dissipate. But there was some chance the storm could survive a passage across Central America and emerge as a tropical depression that would head across drought-parched Cuba and towards the Bahamas.
Authorities evacuated about 14,000 people from low-lying coastal areas. Rivers rose in El Salvador and in neighbouring Honduras, both nations devastated by Hurricane Mitch - a Caribbean storm - in 1998.
The rains began to wash out some roads in both countries, officials reported.
Already one death was indirectly linked to the storm: a military pilot died on Wednesday when he crashed a small plane that he was ferrying from San Salvador's civilian airport to a military base as a precaution against the heavy winds. Officials did not give the cause of the accident.
In neighbouring Guatemala, two workers were killed in the collapse of a ditch they were digging in the village of Caxaque, 160 miles west of Guatemala City, as a light rain fell there. But local firefighters said it was unclear whether the collapse was related to the rains.
The US National Hurricane Centre reported Adrian had maximum sustained winds of almost 80mph and higher gusts, and was moving towards the north east at about 9mph.
Streets in La Libertad were deserted as people sought refuge in their homes after power went out, rains sprayed across an increasingly agitated surf and waves pounded at the pier.
"The electricity has gone out, the wind is getting stronger and it's raining non-stop," said Jorge Alberto Turcios, a guard at a restaurant in La Libertad. The waves are getting higher, there's not a soul on the street."
