Hurricane Felix death toll nears 100,
official says
Original Article: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/weather/09/06/felix/?iref=mpstoryview
Rescuers
searched for survivors of Hurricane Felix on Thursday as the
death toll from the powerful storm rose to nearly 100,
according to The Associated Press.
Ninety-eight Nicaraguans were killed, Abelino Cox told
the AP. Cox is the spokesman for the Regional Emergency
Committee in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
At least one Honduran has died, an official told the AP.
The bodies of 25 fishermen were found along Honduras'
Miskito Coast, believed to be from a group of 109 Nicaraguan
Miskito Indians who sought refuge in canoes when Felix hit,
according to The Associated Press.
Authorities rescued 52 Miskito Indians who lived on
low-lying reefs and keys off the coast, said Honduran
Congresswoman Carolina Echeverria.
They survived the hurricane's deluge by grasping floating
objects until help arrived, and bodies that could not be
recovered were seen floating in the water, she said.
Felix
barreled ashore about 7:45 a.m. ET Tuesday near the
Honduras-Nicaragua border as a Category 5 storm with 160 mph
winds, the most intense classification on the Saffir-Simpson
scale used by meteorologists.
Jorge Ramon Arnesto Soza, executive secretary of the
National System for the Prevention, Mitigation and Attention
of Disasters, said the death toll was likely to increase as
reports came in from remote areas.
Survivors of the storm struggled Thursday. An AP
photographer in an isolated Nicaraguan village saw residents
cracking coconuts to drink the milk because they had nothing
else.
The U.S. Southern Command has sent the USS Wasp to
Nicaragua to help with relief efforts, and Venezuela also
sent aid, according to the AP. At least 57 Cuban doctors and
nurses already working on the Miskito Coast were lending a
hand, too.
Survivors who were fished from the sea told harrowing
stories.
Dario Zacarias, 21, told La Prensa newspaper in Managua,
Nicaragua, that he'd floated in the sea, lashed to a buoy,
until he was picked up by a fishing boat and taken to Puerto
Cabezas.
"My captain died, [saying] 'Save yourselves. Tell my wife
that I couldn't hold out any longer,' " Zacarias said. "I
had to let a woman go who had died, too."
In
Honduras, meanwhile, in addition to the 52 Miskito Indian
survivors, an undetermined number of others aboard a boat
were rescued, Echeverria said.
Nine of the first 52 were found unconscious, "but I just
heard from the hospital that they are out of danger," said
Echeverria, who represents a district along Nicaragua's
border with Honduras.
"Compared with our brothers in Nicaragua, our situation is
less serious," she said.
About 11,000 Miskito Indians in the isolated region did not
evacuate before the storm. Honduran officials had trouble
getting to the remote region but did manage to evacuate more
than 3,100, according to regional army commander Col. Carlos
Edgar Mejia of the 115th Infantry Brigade.
Felix tore the roofs from buildings in Puerto Cabezas and
damaged the town's hospital and airport, Nicaraguan Civil
Defense officials said.
The United Nations' World Food Program said in a statement
that the hurricane ripped the roof off a Nicaragua hotel
where staff members were staying and destroyed a food aid
warehouse.
Nearly 80 percent of Nicaraguans live below the poverty
level, many in ill-constructed homes.
Felix was the second Category 5 storm to hit the region
this year, marking the first recorded instance of two such
storms making landfall in a single hurricane season. The
U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began
keeping records in 1886.
Hurricane Dean, also a Category 5 storm, slammed into
Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula two weeks ago.
