Managua, Nicaragua
In a one-two punch, Hurricane Iota roared ashore along almost exactly the same stretch of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast recently devastated by an equally powerful hurricane and then weakened as it tore across the northern part of the country.
Iota had intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm during the day Monday, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it weakened as it neared the coast late Monday and made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (250 kph). It hit the coast about 30 miles (45 kilometers) south of the Nicaraguan city of Puerto Cabezas, also known as Bilwi.
On Tuesday morning, Iota still carried hurricane force winds as a Category 1 storm, moving inland over northern Nicaragua with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph). It was moving westward at 12 mph (19 kph). The storm was forecast to cross southern Honduras late Tuesday.
Guillermo González, director of Nicaragua’s emergency management agency, said Tuesday morning that preliminary reports from the coast included fallen trees, electric poles and roofs stripped from homes, but no deaths or injuries.
More than 40,000 people were in shelters. He said one hotel in Bilwi had lost its entire roof. As the storm moved westward, the concern became flooding. The Tola river had topped its banks and western Nicaragua, along the Pacific coast were forecast to receive the most rain. Nicaragua’s meteorology director Marcio Baca said that area was forecast to receive six to seven inches of rain and soils were already highly saturated.
People had hunkered down in Bilwi even before the hurricane arrived, already battered by screeching winds and torrential rains.
Business owner Adán Artola Schultz braced himself in the doorway of his house as strong gusts of wind and rain drover water in torrents down the street.
“It is like bullets,” he said of the sound of metal structures banging and buckling in the wind. “This is double destruction,” he said, referring to the damages wrought by Hurricane Eta just two weeks earlier. “This is coming in with fury,” said Artola Schultz.—AP
