Iota death toll rises as rescue efforts reveal destruction

Nicaragua and Honduras bear the brunt of the hurricane’s destruction amid a record year of storms in the Atlantic.

Rescuers wade through a flooded road after the passing of Hurricane Iota in La Lima, Honduras, on November 18 [Delmer Martinez/AP]

Hurricane Iota’s death toll in Central America has continued to rise as authorities on Thursday recovered more bodies buried in landslides triggered by flooding that swept through the already waterlogged region earlier this week.

At least 40 people have been killed to date across the region, Reuters News Agency reported, and the toll is expected to rise as rescue workers reach isolated communities. Most of the deaths have been in Nicaragua and Honduras.

Iota made landfall on Nicaragua’s coast late Monday as a Category-4 hurricane, the strongest on record to have hit the Central American country, and increased in strength to a Category 5 before weakening as it moved inland.

Neighbours help each other as they evacuate the area before Hurricane Iota makes landfall in San Manuel Cortes, Honduras, on November 16 [Delmer Martinez/AP]

It inundated low-lying areas still reeling from Hurricane Eta, another powerful hurricane that battered Nicaragua and killed dozens of people in the region two weeks ago.

More than 130 people were killed by Eta as the hurricane triggered flash floods and mudslides in parts of Central America and Mexico.

Lives lost

A total of 18 people have been confirmed dead in Nicaragua, Reuters reported on Thursday, but the number could go up as authorities searched for survivors of a landslide in the north of the country.

Reports differed on the landslide’s death toll, with Reuters reporting eight deaths and the AFP news agency reporting nine, including six children.

“Coming here and finding my daughter dead … she was my only child, I asked God for a girl and look how it’s ended,” Orlando Navarrete, father of one of the children, told AFP.

On Thursday morning, Honduran authorities confirmed that eight members of two families, including four children, were killed when a landslide buried their homes in a village in a mountainous region populated by Lencas Indigenous people near the border with El Salvador.

Cars were submerged in La Lima near San Pedro Sula in Honduras, after heavy rains from Hurricane Iota caused the Chamelecon river to overflow [Wendell Escoto/AFP]

In Honduras, much of the country’s industrial heartland in the northern Sula Valley was under water, as it was two weeks ago after Hurricane Eta. Water that had covered houses around the San Pedro Sula airport had begun to subside, however.

Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei held an emergency cabinet meeting Thursday to assess the situation in the country, where bridges and roads were destroyed and homes were swept away by floodwaters.

Some 160,000 Nicaraguans and 70,000 Hondurans have been forced to flee to shelters, where aid workers worry the chaotic conditions could lead fresh outbreaks of COVID-19.

Record season

The Atlantic has seen a record storm season this year with 30 named storms and 13 hurricanes.

Scientists have said that warmer seas caused by climate change are making hurricanes stronger for longer after landfall.

Experts also said the destruction caused by the unprecedented 2020 hurricane season could spur more migration out of Central America, which is already coping with insecurity and an economic crisis triggered by coronavirus-related lockdowns imposed earlier this year.

“I think you’re going to be seeing an increase in migration month after month after month because of the compounding nature of this,” Giovanni Bassu, the regional representative for Central America for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), told Reuters.

“One storm after another is a very sad metaphor for the much broader phenomenon” driving migration out of northern Central America, he added.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies