PUERTO CABEZAS (NICARAGUA) / PANAMA CITY – “What I would like the most now is to have a house, food, clothes, that’s what I would like,” says 13-year-old Jhon Dell, as he goes through the ruins that were left where his home used to be in the neighborhood of El Muelle. Hurricane Eta did not leave a single building standing and left dozens of families like John’s homeless. He saw his house, his clothes and his school supplies disappear from one moment to another. There were about five continuous days of rain and wind gusts that exceeded 110 miles per hour.
With the passing of the hours and the relative calm of the weather, the families returned to their homes along the coast of Puerto Cabezas. Mayadana Servantes, 24, holds her little girl, barely a month and a half, while showing a pile of zinc sheets and boards, which were the only things she recovered from her house. Built on cured pine wood piles, the houses in this area of the Nicaraguan Caribbean are built to avoid the floods of the rainy season, but their board walls and ceilings are merely nailed to the structure, and did not resist the winds of Eta, which always turned in the opposite direction, counterclockwise.
“What worries me the most is what am I going to feed my children, and where are we going to sleep, people give us where to sleep one night, two nights, but then?”, explains Madayana.
Her children have been left homeless, without even clothes or sheets. Neighbors helped them out of their house Tuesday afternoon, just as gusts of wind began to blow off their roof.
Until this Friday, the National System for the Prevention, Mitigation and Attention of Disasters (SINAPRED), reported about 30 thousand evacuees throughout the North Caribbean and northern Nicaragua. According to official reports, there is enough provisioning to assist the refugees, but the damage caused to the only land route between Puerto Cabezas and Managua, from where the aid is distributed, seems to be delaying the arrival of food to the families.
Source link : https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/what-i-would-most-now-is-to-have-home-food-and-clothing
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Publish date : 2020-11-05 03:00:00
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