By DPA
Managua : Hurricane Felix pounded north-eastern Nicaragua and left at least four people dead – three adults and a newborn baby – though the eye of the storm struck a sparsely populated area of the Caribbean coast.
Some 5,000 homes were destroyed and about 38,000 people lost property, the authorities said Tuesday at the Nicaraguan capital here.
Deputy chief of Civil Defence Rogelio Flores said some 12,700 people were evacuated from several rural communities and were taken to 72 shelters – 65 of them in the city of Puerto Cabezas – where food, water and clothing were needed.
The Nicaraguan government identified Puerto Cabezas – a city of 63,000 about 580 km north of Managua – and the indigenous communities of Sandy Bay and Bismona as those worst affected by Felix.
Disaster Prevention chief Ramon Arnesto said that in Sandy Bay alone the wind took all 3,000 wooden homes, and only “some 15 small concrete houses” were left standing.
The region is extremely poor and its characteristic wooden houses built on high stilts are particularly vulnerable to strong winds.
Many Nicaraguan villages, particularly in the North Atlantic region, remained isolated and nothing was known about the destinies of some 14,000 indigenous people who refused to be evacuated.
Felix knocked down trees and power lines and tore the roofs from houses over a large area. The debris blocked many roads, preliminary reports said.
The authorities in Managua hoped that the low population density in the affected regions – a swampy area where many communities are only accessible by boat or helicopter – would keep down the number of casualties.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said Felix lost strength over land and was gradually downgraded to a category one hurricane, after touching land Tuesday as a full-blown category five storm with wind speeds of up to 300 km per hour.
Tropical storm Henriette, meanwhile, also became a category one hurricane as it neared Mexico’s Pacific coast. As a tropical storm, Henriette has already led to six deaths in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco and one in the state of Chiapas.
According to the NHC at 21.00 GMT, Henriette made landfall along the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, near the town of San Jose del Cabo Tuesday, with wind speeds of up to 130 km an hour. It was expected to weaken as it moved across the peninsula.
There was heavy rainfall in the region where rain is relatively rare. The authorities said some 2,000 people had been taken to shelters.
Southern Baja is a luxury tourist destination favoured especially by US citizens.
According to the NHC report of 21.00 GMT, Felix showed sustained winds of close to 120 km per hour and higher gusts, and a “rapid weakening” was still expected. However, the Miami-based centre insisted the cyclone remained “a major flood threat”.
The hurricane was expected to continue moving over northeastern Nicaragua for the next several hours and over neighbouring Honduras later Tuesday and early Wednesday.
The NHC warned that heavy rains in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador would “likely produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides”.
The governor of the affected province, Reynaldo Francis Watson, said he was especially concerned about an indigenous group in the region, the Miskitos, who had refused to evacuate.
“The situation is very bad. There are houses without roofs, destroyed churches and schools, trees and power line posts fallen on homes,” Watson said.
He added that there is no telephone communication, and power has been cut off in Puerto Cabezas.
Felix’s path mirrored Hurricane Mitch, which killed thousands of people in Honduras and Nicaragua nine years ago.
Warm weather speeded Felix’s quick rise to a major hurricane from a tropical storm Saturday.
The hurricane made landfall at 12.00 GMT Tuesday in a swampy region on the northeastern tip of Nicaragua, close to the border with Honduras, the NHC said.
Felix follows Dean as the second named hurricane in the region.
Dean last month ploughed across the Lesser Antilles, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Mexico – first slamming into the Yucatan Peninsula as a strong category five storm before crossing the Gulf of Mexico and striking again as a weaker category two storm. It left 28 people dead.