Eta continued to bring devastation to Honduras, Nicaragua and other parts of Central America on Thursday, even after weakening to a tropical depression.
More than 50 deaths are being blamed on the storm, including at least 37 people who were killed by landslides in Guatemala, according to the Associated Press.
President Alejandro Giammattei said Thursday that a saturated mountainside had collapsed into the town of San Cristobal Verapaz, burying homes and leaving more than two dozen dead. The president said two other landslides killed at least 12 people.
Flooding drove hundreds from their homes, and torrential rain — between 7 and 14 inches in some places — caused the deadly slides.
At least 19 deaths had already been blamed on the storm before Giammattei’s announcement, according to the AP, including 13 in Honduras, four in Guatemala and two in Nicaragua. Most of the deaths involved landslides. Officials in Panama said eight people were missing.
About 100 homes have been damaged in flooding and landslides in Guatemala, the AP reported.
(FORECAST: Eta Expected to Track Toward South Florida)
In northwestern Honduras, officials on Thursday ordered residents in the Sula Valley, home to some of the country’s largest cities, to evacuate immediately because of rising floodwaters from the Ulúa River, La Prensa reported.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández asked civilian personnel and private corporations to help with evacuations by providing boats and helicopters, Tu Nota reported.
The river had reached a flood level of almost 52 feet near the city of Chinda in the province of Santa Bárbara, according to Francisco Argeñal, chief meteorologist for COPECO, the Honduran emergency management agency. That’s more than 13 feet higher than the level recorded in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch killed more than 9,000 people in Central America.
Also in Santa Bárbara, officials were trying to reach the village of Lomas del Águila in the Gualala municipality where residents reported landslides had buried at least three homes, according to La Prensa. The bodies of two adults and two children were pulled from the mudslide that occurred about 11 p.m. Wednesday, AP reported.
Two boys ages 8 and 11 died in another mudslide in the township of El Níspero. A girl was buried in a landslide Wednesday in mountains outside the city of Tela. In the same area, a large landslide buried a home with a mother and two children inside it, according to Honduras Fire Department spokesman Óscar Triminio.
Triminio said there was also a 2-year-old girl killed in Santa Barbara department when she and her mother were swept away by floodwaters. The mother survived.
Earlier this week, Honduran officials reported that a 12-year-old girl died in a mudslide and a 15-year-old boy drowned trying to cross a rain-swollen river.
Across Honduras, floodwaters have destroyed more than 450 homes, according to Marvin Aparicio, a spokesman for the country’s emergency management agency, COPECO. More than three dozen communities were cut off when roads and bridges were washed out.
Óscar Armando Martínez Flores, his wife and seven children fled their home in the northern city of Tela when the Lancetilla River burst out of its banks. They arrived at a shelter with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, the AP reported.
“The rains began Monday and the river overflowed,” Martínez said Wednesday. “The firefighters and police arrived to take us out because the houses were flooded.”
Karen Patricia Serrano escaped with her husband and five children.
“We lost everything. I don’t know what we’re going to do. My husband is 74 years old and because of his age he can’t work. I even lost my little animals,” she said, referring to chickens, cats and dogs.
Dozens of people who couldn’t get out in time waited for hours on their rooftops until help arrived or the waters went down, La Prensa reported. Some people were trapped aboard a bus surrounded by floodwaters.
Landslides closed many roads in Chiriqui, a province in Panama that borders Costa Rica. At least eight people were reported missing in the province, according to the AP.
“The situation is worrisome, a lot of help is needed,” said Javier Pittí, mayor of Tierras Altas in Chiriqui.
More than 200 residents of the Ngabe Bugle autonomous Indigenous area were flooded out of their homes.
Hurricane Eta made landfall Tuesday afternoon as a Category 4 storm. The latest forecast calls for Eta to reemerge and restrengthen over the Caribbean Sea this weekend. The storm system could approach South Florida early next week.
Firefighters with the Winston-Salem Fire Department arrive at Creekwood Apartments to assist with evacuations due to flooding on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020 in Winston-Salem, N.C. (Andrew Dye/The Winston-Salem Journal via AP)
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Publish date : 2020-11-05 03:00:00
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