San Salvador | Iota, a hurricane turned tropical storm, entered El Salvador on Wednesday after having already killed at least ten people and caused enormous damage in Central America, especially in Nicaragua where thousands of people are isolated, without drinking water or electricity.
Torrential rains from Iota continue to ravage parts of Central America already devastated two weeks ago by a previous hurricane, Eta.
Iota killed at least six people in Nicaragua, including two children, one in Panama and two others in a Colombian archipelago.
The phenomenon will continue as a tropical storm and sweep El Salvador from east to west with sustained winds blowing up to 65 km / h to reach around 6 a.m. (Quebec time) the Pacific Ocean where it should then deteriorate, a Roberto Gonzalez, meteorologist at the Observatory of the Ministry of the Environment, told AFP.
For its part, the government of Honduras closed the country’s main roads until Wednesday due to the high risk of flash floods in rivers.
After amassing energy in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, Iota made landfall in Nicaragua on Monday as a Category 5 hurricane, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
It was then bringing strong winds sometimes reaching 260 km / h, according to the American hurricane monitoring center, the NHC, based in Miami (Florida).
Persistent threat
Iota reached Honduras on Tuesday, downgraded to a tropical storm. But the NHC has warned that flooding and flash floods posing a serious threat to people in parts of Central America will continue until Thursday due to torrential rains.
Many regions had already been hit and weakened by Eta, which made landfall on November 3 in Nicaragua as a category 4 hurricane and killed at least 200 people and affected 2.5 million people.
In Nicaragua, the port city of Bilwi, the main agglomeration of the Caribbean region of the country, was hit hard, suffering extensive damage.
Two children died on Monday as they tried to cross a swollen stream and four other people were killed in various parts of Nicaragua on Tuesday, victims of floods and landslides, the Nicaraguan Vice President said, Rosario Murillo.
Isolated
Thousands of Bilwi residents remained isolated on Tuesday, deprived of telecommunications, water and electricity. The flooding of the Wawa River also prevented any passage between the region and the rest of Nicaragua.
“Trees fell, as well as electricity pylons, roofs of houses flew away and a hotel lost its entire roof,” said the director of the Nicaraguan civil protection services (Sinapred), Guillermo Gonzalez.
More than 110,000 homes are without electricity and more than 47,000 no longer have running water, according to the Nicaraguan authorities.
In Bilwi, the neighborhoods closest to the coast were flooded from the first rains brought on Monday by the approaching hurricane, AFP journalists noted on the spot.
“The wind is too strong. He took everything away: the roof and the wooden windows of my solid-built house, ”Jessi Urbina, who lives in a neighborhood near the port, told them. The wind blew the tin roofs “as if they were made of cardboard”, residents also testified.
In Colombia, two people were killed and another was reported missing on two Colombian islands, Santa Catalina and Providencia, where much of the infrastructure was destroyed, announced Tuesday President Ivan Duque, who visited the site. .
In Panama, a woman from an indigenous community has perished and some 2,000 people are staying in shelters, authorities say.
In Guatemala, where the previous hurricane left 46 people dead and 96 missing, the Meteorological Institute predicts an increase in precipitation on Wednesday and Thursday across the country on already soggy soils, conducive to flooding and landslides.
Warming seas caused by climate change make hurricanes stronger longer after they make landfall, scientists say.
A record 30 tropical storms have been recorded this season in the Caribbean, Central America and the Southeastern United States.
The heads of state of Central American countries accuse industrialized countries of being responsible for global warming. They jointly presented a request for reconstruction aid to international financial organizations on Monday.