Thousands Flee Hurricane Felix in Central America
Date: 04-Sep-07
Country: HONDURAS
Author: Gustavo Palencia
The highly dangerous Category 4 storm charged toward
Nicaragua and Honduras with top sustained winds of 145 mph (230
kph), provoking fears of a repeat of Hurricane Mitch, which
killed some 10,000 people in Central America in 1998.
"We are faced with a very serious threat to lives and
property. The most important thing is that people pay heed to
the call for evacuation so that we don't have to count bodies
later," said Marco Burgos, head of Honduras' civil protection
agency.
Hundreds of tourists flew to the Honduran mainland from
beach and diving resorts on the Bay Islands.
Emergency services sailed Miskito Indians out of vulnerable
coastal areas in Honduras, and Nicaragua said it would evacuate
thousands more on its side of the swampy border area, dotted
with lagoons and crocodile-infested rivers.
Felix, the second hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic season,
was for hours a top-ranked Category 5 storm like last month's
Hurricane Dean, which killed 27 people in the Caribbean and
Mexico.
Category 5 hurricanes can cause huge damage and are
considered rare. But there were four of them in the 2005
Atlantic season, including Katrina, and more of the potent
storms this year could boost claims that global warming may
produce stronger tropical cyclones.
Also on Monday, Tropical Storm Henriette headed across the
eastern Pacific toward Mexico's Baja California peninsula at
near hurricane strength after killing six people in the resort
city of Acapulco during the weekend.
London coffee futures ended higher on Monday, felled
by speculative buying on concern Felix might damage arabica
coffee growing areas in Central America.
BAD MEMORIES
Memories of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 still strike fear into
Honduras, one of the poor Central American countries worst hit.
Some 10,000 people died in the region in mudslides and
flooding.
"Besides asking God to prevent a catastrophe, we are buying
water, food and medicine and boarding up windows," said Silvia
Sierra, a resident of Roatan island off the Honduran coast.
In 1974, Hurricane Fifi killed up to 8,000 people in
Honduras after grazing its Caribbean coast and dumping up to 24
inches (61 cm) of rain on the northern mountains.
Felix was expected to smack into the northern border
between Honduras and Nicaragua on Tuesday morning and then hit
southern Belize and move through the Peten jungle region of
Guatemala and into southern Mexico.
Whether Felix would be able to re-emerge over the Bay of
Campeche, where Mexico has its major offshore oil fields, and
strengthen again in the Gulf of Mexico was unclear.
Felix was about 305 miles (490 km) east of Cabo Gracias a
Dios on the border between Nicaragua and Honduras and speeding
westward, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Its rains might be as severe a threat as its ferocious
winds. Felix was expected to drop 5 to 8 inches (12.7 to 20.3
cm) of rain across northern Honduras and northeastern
Nicaragua. In some areas, 12 inches (30.5 cm) of rain could
fall, possibly producing dangerous flash floods and mudslides.
The US energy industry, skittish about storms since
hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 toppled rigs, cut pipelines and
flooded refineries, was monitoring Felix carefully.
But companies said they had yet to evacuate platforms in
the Gulf of Mexico, where a third of US domestic crude is
produced and 15 percent of its natural gas.
(Additional reporting by Michael Christie in Miami)