Eta continued to cross northern Nicaragua after the country’s Caribbean coast for much of Tuesday, ingesting already remote communities and causing fatal landslides in two countries that killed at least 3 people.
The typhoon had weakened a tropical typhoon on Tuesday, but it moved so slowly and rained so much that much of Central America was on high alert.
The existing Eta is still on its way throughout South Florida. The National Weather Service in Miami warned citizens of the possibility of heavy rain and flooding in South Florida from Thursday night through Monday.
While it is too early to determine the precise timing, magnitude, and location of imaginable impacts of wind and precipitation, forecasters warn Florida citizens to monitor Eta’s progress throughout the week.
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Eta arrived on the coast on Tuesday afternoon south of the Nicaraguan town of Bilwi as a tough category four hurricane after stopping near the coast for hours. The city of about 60,000 people had been powerless since Monday night. scattered through its streets. About 20,000 more people in the domain were in shelters.
Inland, about 100 kilometers west of where Eta made landfall, two gold miners died when a mountain released tons of dust on Tuesday morning. A third miner escaped from the slide and asked for help.
A painting uncovered before rescuers had to suspend their recovery efforts due to nightfall and fear of additional landslides as the rain continued, said Lieutenant Cesar Malespin of the Bonanza Fire Department, who said recovery efforts would continue on Wednesday. torrential rains, he said.
The typhoon had been flooding neighboring Honduras with rain since at least Sunday and the country reported its first death attributed to Eta in the early hours of Tuesday. A 12-year-old woman died on a landslide in San Pedro Sula, the main town in central northern Honduras. said Marvin Aparicio, director of the Honduran Emergency Management’s national incident command formula.
In Honduras, at least 559 other people affected by the floods had to move to shelters or pass on to their families, he said, and at least 25 other people were rescued, he said. His firm reported that at least six rivers were causing major flooding.
Meteorologists said central and northern Nicaragua and much of Honduras can get just 15 to 25 inches of rain, adding 35 inches in remote areas. Heavy rains were also likely in southern Guatemala, southern Belize and Jamaica.
The expected amount of rain was compared to Hurricane Mitch in 1998, one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes in history. A file report from the U. S. National Hurricane Center is a report from the U. S. National Hurricane Center. But it’s not the first time He said Mitch killed more than 9,000 people.
The remote northeast of Nicaragua, where Eta took land, was already far away before the storm. Crossing the wide Wawa River to succeed in Bilwi, also known as Puerto Cabezas, the most important city in the area, requires taking a ferry, which had suspended operations in the run-up to the storm, so it is highly unlikely to drive to the area that has an effect.
Cairo Jarquin, Nicaragua’s Emergency Response Project Manager for Catholic Relief Services, said the immediate fear in northeastern Nicaragua after the typhoon would be to supply food and water to those remote communities.
The majority of the region’s population is miskitos, who live on subsistence agriculture or fishing, Jarquin said; most of their houses are undeniable wooden constructions concentrated in riverside communities that have suffered serious damage; they have hand-dug wells for drinking water, which I feared would spread through flooding.
As the typhoon moved west towards the mountains of Nicaragua and the border with Honduras, it was feared that this could have a devastating effect on the country’s coffee harvest, a key export, just as the harvest was to begin.
Eta has already led Honduras to cancel a long weekend that was due to begin on Wednesday, the extra-long weekend aimed at bringing tourism to life and helping the economy strangled by the coronavirus pandemic, but promised to bring several more rainy days to Honduras. the area.
They contributed: Cheryl McCloud, Naples Daily News. Associated Press editors Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.