MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Hurricane Eta continued to spin across northern Nicaragua after lashing the country’s Caribbean coast for much of Tuesday, isolating already remote communities and setting off deadly landslides in two countries that killed at least three people.
The storm had weakened by late Tuesday, but was moving so slowly and dumping so much rain that much of Central America was on high alert.
Eta came ashore Tuesday afternoon south of the Nicaraguan city of Bilwi as a powerful Category 4 hurricane after stalling just off the coast for hours. The city of about 60,000 had been without power since Monday evening. Corrugated metal roofing and uprooted trees were scattered through its streets. Some 20,000 of the area’s residents were in shelters.
Inland, about 100 miles west of where Eta made landfall, two gold miners were killed when a mountainside unleashed tons of mud Tuesday morning. A third miner escaped the slide and sought help.
One body was recovered before rescuers had to suspend recovery efforts due to nightfall and fears that more slides could occur as the rain continued, said Lt. Cesar Malespin of the Bonanza Fire Department. He said recovery efforts would continue Wednesday. Bonanza was getting lashed by strong winds and torrential rain, he said.
The storm has been drenching neighboring Honduras with rain since at least Sunday and the country reported its first death attributed to Eta early Tuesday. A 12-year-old girl died in a mudslide in San Pedro Sula, the main population center in northern Honduras, said Marvin Aparicio, director of the national system of incident commands for Honduras’ emergency management agency.
In Honduras, there were at least 559 people affected by flooding who had to move to shelters or go to relatives’ homes, he said. At least 25 people had been rescued, he said. His agency reported at least six rivers causing significant flooding.
Forecasters said central and northern Nicaragua and much of Honduras could get 15 to 25 inches of rain, with 35 inches in isolated areas. Heavy rains also were likely in eastern Guatemala, southern Belize and Jamaica.
The quantities of rain expected drew comparisons to 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, one of the most deadly Atlantic hurricanes in history. An archival report from the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Mitch led to the deaths of more than 9,000 people.
Nicaragua’s remote northeast where Eta made landfall was already isolated before the storm. Crossing the wide Wawa river to reach Bilwi, also known as Puerto Cabezas, the main city in the region, requires riding a ferry, which had suspended operations as the storm approached, making driving to the impact zone impossible.
Cairo Jarquin, emergency response project manager in Nicaragua for Catholic Relief Services, said the immediate concern in northeastern Nicaragua after the storm’s passage would be getting water and food to those remote communities.
The majority of the region’s inhabitants are Miskito, who live through subsistence farming or fishing, Jarquin said. Most of their homes are simple wooden construction concentrated in riverside communities that likely suffered heavy damage. They depend on hand dug wells for drinking water, which he feared would be contaminated by floodwaters.
As the storm continued west toward Nicaragua’s mountains and the border with Honduras concerns grew that it could have devastating impact on the country’s coffee crop — a key export — just as the harvest was set to begin.
Eta already led Honduras to cancel a long weekend that had been scheduled to begin Wednesday. The extra-long weekend was supposed to spur tourism and help the economy strangled by the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Eta promised to bring several more days of rain to the region.