*Perilous Times and Global Warming

Felix leaves wicked trail of devastation*

By Julia Rios in Nicaragua

September 05, 2007 10:22am
Article from: Agence France-Presse

A FURIOUS Hurricane Felix has left a trail of devastation in an already
dirt-poor area of Nicaragua, killing at least four people, including a
newborn baby, and destroying 5000 homes.

"We saw homes flying through the air with people still inside," said
Reinaldo Francis, the governor of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region,
on the Caribbean coast.

A baby died shortly after birth in the worst-hit city of Puerto Cabezas,
Health Minister Maritza Cuan said.

The girl's mother had refused to head to a shelter ahead of the storm.

One man was killed when his home collapsed on top of him and another
died when he fell from a roof he was repairing as the storm rolled in,
officials said.

The body of a man from the Sandy Bay coastal community was found
floating in the ocean several hours after the hurricane roared ashore in
northeastern Nicaragua, packing maximum sustained winds of 260km/h.

Neighbouring Honduras also braced for trouble as Felix headed its way
today as a much weakened hurricane but one that could still trigger
massive floods and potentially deadly mudslides.

The storm rekindled bitter memories of Hurricane Mitch, one of the
deadliest on record, which devastated the region and killed at least
9000 people, most of them in Nicaragua and Honduras, in 1998.

"The situation is serious, but thank God the number of victims is not as
high as those caused by Hurricane Mitch," Nicaraguan President Daniel
Ortega said.

Today's landfall marked the first time on record that two Atlantic
hurricanes hit land at the topmost category five in the same year, after
Hurricane Dean slammed into Mexico on August 21.

"Puerto Cabezas is destroyed, everywhere there are smashed homes and
churches, downed trees and power lines," Mr Francis said.

In a region where an estimated 200,000 people live in abject poverty,
many of the city's homes were made of wood and tin.

"We are in a bad way, roads are impassible, people are alarmed, they
have no power, no water and many have nothing to eat," the regional
governor said.

Authorities said an airport control tower collapsed and several
neighbourhoods were flooded.

More than 30,000 people in Puerto Cabezas reportedly did not heed calls
to head to safety before the hurricane barrelled ashore.

"We left the house because the storm tore off the tin roof, the house
got flooded and trees were falling. We stayed in the street," a resident
told a local radio station.

At the height of the storm, authorities received distress calls from
fishing vessels with dozens of people aboard.

"There is nothing we can do for them now," Ramon Arnesto Soza, the head
of the government's disaster response agency Sinapred, told local radio.

The storm lost most of its punch as it travelled inland, but Honduras
feared torrential rains were likely to trigger mudslides and cause
rivers to overflow.

Authorities ordered 10,000 people to evacuate threatened areas of
Tegucigalpa today as revised forecasts indicated the hurricane would
move much closer to the Honduran capital than initially thought.

More evacuations were ordered in other parts of the country and hundreds
of tourists were earlier taken to safety by air and sea from the islands
of Roatan and Guanaja, which are popular with scuba divers.

Mexico, which was already battered by Hurricane Dean two weeks ago, got
a renewed pounding today, this time on its Pacific Coast, as Hurricane
Henriette swirled over the southern tip of the Baja California
peninsula, a popular tourist destination.