NICARAGUA: Nicaraguans brace for onslaught of Hurricane Felix

Nicaraguan authorities cleared hospitals and evacuated residents as Hurricane Felix bore down on the coast. Hurricane Felix slammed into Nicaragua and Honduras on Tuesday (September 4) as a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm, lashing remote coastal villages with violent winds and torrential rains. Felix made landfall at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) north of the small port of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, and was moving westward at 16 mph (26 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Thousands of people huddled in storm shelters early as Felix, upgraded to an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm, approached the coast provoking fears of a repeat of Hurricane Mitch, which killed some 10,000 people in Central America in 1998. Nicaraguan emergency workers evacuated a hospital in Puerto Cabezas to higher ground while evacuations of residents continued through the night. "Because of the bad weather they are evacuating us to the church, they brought us here," one evacuee said as she and her family set up shop inside a church being used as a shelter. "I didn't want to come but they (Nicaraguan officials) insisted. Truthfully, I am not afraid, I have faith in God." The area where Felix hit is sparsely populated and dotted with lagoons and marshes but the storm threatened many poor Honduran and Guatemalan villages further inland that are perched on hillsides and vulnerable to mudslides. It was too early to predict damage to the region's vital coffee crops. The storm is due to drive through Honduras into Guatemala and then Chiapas in southern Mexico. Felix is the second hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic season, and the second Category 5 storm after Hurricane Dean, which killed 27 people in the Caribbean and Mexico in August.

ITN Source | September 4, 2007

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