Hurricane Iota’s devastation comes into focus in storm-weary Nicaragua

Pedro Haslam, the Matagalpa head of the ruling Sandinista Front party, told local Channel 4 television that he could confirm four deaths, four survivors and 15 missing in the landslide.

Rolando José Alvarez, the Roman Catholic bishop of Matagalpa, said via Twitter that priests were being sent to the area.

In the coastal city of Bilwi, a distraught Filimon Wilfred, 72, said Iota had destroyed his family’s five houses leaving its 18 members homeless.

“The hurricane came, it destroyed my house, my daughter’s house. It destroyed five houses in total,” Wilfred said. “Where am I going to live?”

Iota arrived on Monday evening with winds of 250 kph, hitting nearly the same location as Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier. By early Wednesday, Iota had dissipated over El Salvador, but the storm’s torrential rains remained a threat. Parts of neighbouring Honduras were still under water from Eta.

The storm’s centre passed just south of Tegucigalpa, the mountainous capital of Honduras, where residents of low-lying, flood-prone areas were evacuated, as were residents of hillside neighbourhoods vulnerable to landslides.

Along Honduras’ remote eastern coast, people fled their homes as waters rose.

“What affected us most here was the flooding,” said Teonela Paisano Wood, mayor of the Honduran town of Brus Laguna. “We are in danger if it keeps raining.”

Mirna Wood, vice president of the Miskito ethnic group in Honduras’ far eastern Gracias a Dios region, was in Tegucigalpa collecting donations for her community ravaged by Eta when Iota hit.

Some 40,000 people in the area had moved to shelters, but others remained stranded near the border with Nicaragua. Some were rescued by Nicaraguan authorities, she said.

“We are facing an incredible emergency,” Wood said. “There is no food. There is no water.”

Panama reported that one person was killed and another missing in its western Indigenous autonomous Ngabe Bugle area near the border with Costa Rica.

Earlier this month, Eta caused more than 130 deaths as it triggered flash floods and mudslides in parts of Central America and Mexico. The storm also left tens of thousands homeless in Honduras, which reported 74 deaths and nearly 57,000 people in shelters, mostly in the north.

Before hitting Nicaragua, Iota blew over the tiny Colombian island of Providencia, where Colombian President Ivan Duque said one person was killed and 98 per cent of the island’s infrastructure was “affected.”

Iota was the 30th named storm of this year’s historically busy Atlantic hurricane season. It also developed later in the season than any other Category 5 storm on record, topping a November 8, 1932, Cuba hurricane, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.

The hurricane season officially ends November 30.

AP