Tropical storm Eta kills 4 as it pummels Nicaragua, Honduras

As tropical storm Eta continues to move through Honduras bringing heavy rains and causing deadly landslides in the country's east and in northern Nicaragua, at least four people have been killed as of Wednesday evening.

The storm had weakened by late Tuesday, but was moving so slowly and dumping so much rain that much of Central America was on high alert. Eta had sustained winds of 55 km/h and was moving westward at 11 km/h.

Hondurasreported its first death attributed to Etaearly Tuesday, after a12-year-old girl died in a mudslide in San Pedro Sula, the main population centre in the north, said Marvin Aparicio, director of the national system of incident commands for the country's emergency management agency.

By Wednesday afternoon, the Honduras' emergency management agency confirmed the death of a 15-year-old boy in the central Honduras town of Sulaco, though details were not immediately available.

Earlier, on Tuesday, two gold minerswere killed in a landslide in Nicaragua, about 160 kilometres west of where Eta made landfall, according to Lt. Cesar Malespin of the Bonanza Fire Department.A third miner escaped the slide and sought help.

Eta came ashore Tuesday afternoon south of the Nicaraguan city of Bilwi as a powerful Category 4 hurricane after stalling just off the coast for hours. The city of about 60,000 had been without power since Monday evening. Corrugated metal roofing and uprooted trees were scattered through its streets. Some 20,000 of the area's residents were in shelters.

"The debris teams are starting to work and we still can't give a sense of what happened," a local government official in Bilwi, Ivania Diaz said. "We have seen very humble homes completely destroyed."

One body was recovered before rescuers had to suspend recovery efforts because of nightfall and fears that more slides could occur as the rain continued, said Lt. Cesar Malespin of the Bonanza Fire Department. He said recovery efforts would continue Wednesday. Bonanza was getting lashed by strong winds and torrential rain, he said.

The long-term forecast shows Eta taking a turn over Central America and them reforming in the Caribbean, possibly reaching Cuba on Sunday and the Florida Keys on Monday.

Heavy rain in Honduras

In Honduras, there were at least 559 people affected by flooding who had to move to shelters or go to relatives' homes, he said. At least 25 people had been rescued, he said. His agency reported at least six rivers causing significant flooding.

Forecasters said central and northern Nicaragua and much of Honduras could get 380 to 635 millimetresof rain, with 890 millimetresin isolated areas. Heavy rains also were likely in eastern Guatemala, southern Belize and Jamaica.

The quantities of rain expected drew comparisons to 1998's Hurricane Mitch, one of the most deadly Atlantic hurricanes in history. An archival report from the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Mitch led to the deaths of more than 9,000 people.

Worries over access to water and food

Nicaragua's remote northeast where Eta made landfall was already isolated before the storm. Crossing the wide Wawa river to reach Bilwi, also known as Puerto Cabezas, the main city in the region, requires riding a ferry, which had suspended operations as the storm approached, making driving to the impact zone impossible.

Cairo Jarquin, emergency response project manager in Nicaragua for Catholic Relief Services, said the immediate concern in northeastern Nicaragua after the storm's passage would be getting water and food to those remote communities.

The majority of the region's inhabitants are Miskito, who live through subsistence farming or fishing, Jarquin said. Most of their homes are simple wooden construction concentrated in riverside communities that likely suffered heavy damage. They depend on hand-dug wells for drinking water, which he feared would be contaminated by floodwaters.

As the storm continued west toward Nicaragua's mountains and the border with Honduras, concerns grew that it could have a devastating impact on the country's coffee crop a key export just as the harvest was set to begin.

Eta already led Honduras to cancel a long weekend that had been scheduled to begin Wednesday. The extra-long weekend was supposed to spur tourism and help the economy strangled by the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Eta promised to bring several more days of rain to the region.