Iota’s Devastation Comes into Focus in Storm-Weary Nicaragua
Men wade through a street flooded after the passing of Hurricane Iota in La Lima, Honduras, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. Iota flooded stretches of Honduras still underwater from Hurricane Eta, after it hit Nicaragua Monday evening as a Category 4 hurricane and weakened as it moved across Central America, dissipating over El Salvador early Wednesday. (AP Photo/Delmer Martinez)
MACIZO DE PEÑAS BLANCAS, Nicaragua (AP) — The devastation caused by Hurricane Iota became clearer Wednesday as images emerged showing piles of wind-tossed lumber that used to be homes and concrete walls that were pounded into pieces by the second Category 4 storm to blast Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast in two weeks.
Nicaragua Vice President and first lady Rosario Murillo on Wednesday raised the nation’s death toll to 16. The victims were spread across the country, swept away by swollen rivers or buried in landslides.
Rescuers searched at the site of a landslide in northern Nicaragua, where the local government confirmed four deaths and neighbors spoke of at least 16. A short video from the nation’s emergency management agency showed a massive bowl-shaped mountainside shrouded in clouds that collapsed. Police blocked media access to the site on the Macizo de Peñas Blancas, a mountain in Matagalpa province, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Managua.
There were seven confirmed dead at the mountain, and the search continued, Murillo said.
Miguel Rodríguez, who works on a ranch next to the site, said he saw at least seven bodies.
“The landslide came with all the dirt, and it became like a river going down. It took all of the little houses that were there. There were five homes, five families,” Rodríguez said.
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% 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 Nov. 8, 1932, Cuba hurricane, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.
The hurricane season officially ends Nov. 30.