LA CEIBA, Honduras — Hurricane Felix roared ashore early Tuesday as a fearsome Category 5 storm, the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms have come ashore in the same season.
The storm hit near the swampy Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians dependent on canoes to make their way to safety. Twenty fishermen were missing, and communication to the area was cut off.
Meanwhile, off Mexico’s Pacific coast, tropical storm Henriette strengthened into a hurricane with 120 km/h winds and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was churning toward the upscale resort of Cabo San Lucas, popular with Hollywood stars and sea fishing enthusiasts.
Some 350 people were evacuated along Nicaragua’s coast as Felix approached. Many other Miskito Indians refused to leave low-lying areas and head to shelters set up in schools, and the newspaper La Prensa reported that 20 fishermen were missing.
With communication cut, it was impossible to find out what was happening as the storm’s winds hit the remote, swampy area, much of it reachable only by canoe. The Nicaraguan government sent in some soldiers before the storm and was preparing to send in more help once the hurricane passed.
Hurricane Dean came ashore just last month as a Category 5 storm, and Felix’s landfall marked the first time that two Category 5 hurricanes have hit land in a season since 1886, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Only 31 such storms have been recorded in the Atlantic, including eight in the last five seasons.
“This is an extremely dangerous and potentially catastrophic hurricane. We just hope everybody has taken the precautions necessary to protect life and property,” Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said Tuesday.
Off Mexico’s Pacific coast, Henriette strengthened into a hurricane and was on a path to hit the tip of the Baja California Peninsula on Tuesday afternoon. The storm had sustained winds of 120 km/h.
At 8 a.m. EDT it was centred about 130 kilometres south-southeast of the peninsula.
Before dawn Tuesday, strong waves pounded the resort’s beaches, rain fell in sheets and strong winds whipped palm trees. More than 100 residents spent the night in makeshift shelters as the storm approached, and more were expected to leave their homes Tuesday.
On Monday, police in Cabo San Lucas said one woman drowned in high surf stirred up by Henriette. Over the weekend, the storm caused flooding and landslides that killed six people in Acapulco.
In the final hours before hurricane Felix hit, Grupo Taca Airlines frantically airlifted tourists from the Honduran island of Roatan, popular for its pristine reefs and diving resorts, while the U.S. Southern Command said in a statement that a Chinook helicopter evacuated 19 U.S. citizens.
Another 1,000 people were removed from low-lying coastal areas and smaller islands.
Bob Shearer, 54, from Butler, Pa., said he was disappointed his family’s scuba diving trip to Roatan was cut short by the evacuation order.
“I only got seven dives in. I hope they didn’t jump the gun too soon,” he said as he waited for a flight home in the San Pedro Sula airport.
Felix was projected to rake central Honduras, slam into Guatemala and then cut across southern Mexico.
The storm was following the same path as 1998’s hurricane Mitch, a sluggish storm that stalled for a week over Central America, killing nearly 11,000 people and leaving more than 8,000 missing, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua.
