Henriette hits Mexico as Felix death toll hits 18
Doctors treated storm casualties in a makeshift clinic after Hurricane Felix flooded their hospital and wrecked villages on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast.
The death toll rose to at least 18 today, with dozens more missing.
Far to the north west, Hurricane Henriette ploughed into Mexico for a second time in two days near the port city of Guaymas with top sustained winds of 75mph and quickly weakened into a tropical storm as it headed inland.
Seven deaths were reported from the Pacific storm, which hit Baja California on Tuesday.
Schools and ports were closed and residents evacuated low-lying areas on Mexico’s mainland, but the storm was expected to weaken quickly over the desert before dumping a few inches of rain on New Mexico today.
Felix came ashore on Tuesday as a Category 5 storm, killing at least 18 people across Nicaragua, said Alvaro Rivas, a spokesman for Nicaragua’s Civil Defence Department. He said at least 10 people were missing in and around Puerto Cabezas and more than 50 in the Matagalpa province in the north.
Felix broke up yesterday over the mountains of Central America, but heavy rains continued across avalanche-prone areas.
Among the missing were four fishermen whose small boat sank while Felix’s centre was passing overhead. Fernando Pereira, 24, said he clung to a piece of wood for 12 hours, despite a dislocated shoulder, and washed ashore at Sandy Bay, only hours after Felix made landfall there.
He has not seen his friends since.
“I felt horrible,” he said. “I was drinking salt water, and I thought I was going to die.”
Felix barrelled through vulnerable, low-lying settlements of Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians.
With about 150,000 people scattered in small hamlets in the swampy jungle, the Miskitos are the largest Indian group in Nicaragua, descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves who live semi-autonomously, similar to people on US Indian reservations.
Their primitive paradise of coconut groves and wooden shacks is reachable only by air or flat-bottom boats, even in good weather. Big storms leave them even more isolated and desperate for help.
The remains of Felix were still dumping rain on Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and thousands of evacuees anxiously stayed away from shaky hillside slums and swollen rivers.
Many had feared a repeat of the 1998 nightmare of Hurricane Mitch, which parked over Central America for days, causing flooding and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing.
In Mexico, Henriette swept across Baja California then over the Gulf of California before reaching land before making landfall early today near Guaymas, the US Hurricane Centre said.
Among the coastal communities getting drenched was San Carlos, a beach town packed with American pensioners next to the port city of Guaymas.
“It’s deadly – the waves reached up to the boulevard,” said Fatima Reyes, 23, of San Carlos. “It blew away roofing, trees and signs.”
Mexican navy captain Leopoldo Mendoza said a navy helicopter was searching the Bay of La Paz for a small boat that went missing on Tuesday amid high seas, wind and rain caused by Henriette.
He said two Mexicans and two Japanese were on board.
