Pascal Arogorn Ibe
The number of deaths linked to tropical depression Eta in Central America may be greater than 170, according to new figures given on Friday, following landslides and flooding triggered by the storm.
Eta made landfall as a hurricane in Nicaragua on Tuesday. It was downgraded to a tropical depression on Wednesday before entering Honduras, which it left late on Thursday, according to the country’s civil protection agency, COPECO.
About 150 people are estimated to have been killed in Guatemala, President Alejandro Giammattei said on Friday.
The estimate includes 100 people who went missing when 150 houses were buried under a landslide in the village of Queja near San Cristobal Verapaz in the centre of the country, according to figures given by the army.
Soldiers had to cross a mountainous area on foot to reach the village, Giammattei said at a press conference.
“At this moment we calculate that, between the dead and those missing, non-official figures put it at more or less 150 dead, and we say non-official because we don’t have it totally confirmed,” the president said.
Eta also lashed other Central American countries, with 14 people reported dead in Honduras, five in Panama, two in Nicaragua and two in Costa Rica.
More than 80,000 people were affected by the storm in Guatemala, where 900 houses were damaged and more than 4,600 people had to be evacuated, according to figures given by the disaster management agency CONRED.
More than 360,000 people were reported to have been affected in Honduras, where the Ulua and Choluteca rivers overflowed their banks, requiring the evacuation of thousands of people.
“We lost everything, absolutely everything,” one of those affected by the disaster told the daily La Prensa in San Pedro Sula in the north. “We put everything on tables, hoping that the flooding would not be so serious, but then everything became inundated.
“We now have nothing, not even work,” he added.
The Honduran government allowed mayors to use resources earmarked for the fight against the coronavirus pandemic for the emergency caused by Eta.
“We have limited resources,” Finance Minister Marco Midence said. He launched an appeal to “all people and institutions to bring humanitarian aid, to attend to the structural damage and to make sure the basic services continue functioning.”
The centre of Eta will move across the northwestern Caribbean Sea on Friday, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
It will “approach the Cayman Islands Saturday, and be near Cuba Saturday night and Sunday,” the centre added.
Central America is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters due to its generally poor infrastructure.
In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed at least 9,000 people across the entire region.
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