- Title: HONDURAS: Heavy rainfall in Honduras from Hurricane Felix causes flooding
- Date: 5th September 2007
- Summary: BOY ON BIKE IN RAIN STORM VARIOUS OF CHILDREN OF AFRICAN DESCENT
- Embargoed: 20th September 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Honduras
- Country: Honduras
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVA5ZUI8QD1AWL8AVHFDW0Y0KO9N
- Story Text: Honduras endures heavy rains and winds as Hurricane Felix passes through.
Hurricane Felix ripped into Central America on Tuesday (September 04), trashing a port on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, killing at least four people and threatening deadly mudslides in Honduras and Guatemala.
Residents in Ceiba, suffered from foods after intense rain. Vehicles could be seen crossing flooded roads, palm trees were wiped up into a frenzy and pedestrians had to cross through knee high water.
Felix came hard on the heels of another Category 5 storm, the most powerful type. Last month, Hurricane Dean killed 27 people in the Caribbean and Mexico.
It was the first time on record that two Atlantic hurricanes made landfall as Category 5 storms in the same season, and the fourth time since records began in 1851 that more than one Category 5 formed in a year.
Hurricane Felix weakened to a tropical storm as it dumped rain on Central America on Tuesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Felix earlier hit the Caribbean coastline of Nicaragua and Honduras as a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful type of storm.
In Puerto Cortes, located 187 miles from the Honduran capital city of Tegucigalpa, with a population of approximately 36,000, residents are expecting heavy rain fall and flooding resulting from Felix.
A resident from Puerto Cortes said that his family will evacuate if they need to.
"We are calm waiting for the moment when we should evacuate. We'll do so if we have to and if not we'll stay here."
About 70,000 Hondurans were evacuated to shelters, but some 15,000 people were unable to find transport and were forced to ride out the storm in their homes.
Authorities in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa told 10,000 people in areas of the city threatened by flooding to evacuate, or risk being forcibly be moved by police if they refused.
A woman in her late-thirties, from Puerto Cortes, Ronnie Flores, said that she worries about feeding her family.
"I'm worried about saving my children's, mother, brother's and sister's, niece's lives and have food available so that they don't suffer for lack of food," Flores told Reuters.
In Honduras and Nicaragua, emergency workers took thousands of Miskito Indians out of coastal areas near the border. Some 35,000 of the turtle-fishing Miskitos live in Honduras and more than 100,000 in Nicaragua.
A Canadian tourist took a much more lighthearted approach to the storm.
"I was actually completely fine with staying there. It was just a mandatory evacuation set by the mayor or whatever of the island. I wasn't scared I was just looking forward to a good storm," said Tonya Murphy.
Despite growing consensus that global warming may spawn stronger tropical cyclones, weather experts believe it is too soon to blame climate change for the back-to-back hurricanes. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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