![]() ![]() Thousands of people were also evacuated in Honduras. The agency said 63,000 people in Nicaragua were evacuated to 600 shelters. More than 260,000 people in Colombia are estimated to have been affected by the hurricane, according to the European Commission's humanitarian aid agency. Everything is destroyed," said Adrián Villamizar, an evacuee and pastor of the island's Adventist Church who was evacuated from Providencia. "The island was destroyed and all the houses were erased. Boats and other debris were strewn across yards and roadways. With sustained winds of 155 mph, Iota ripped roofs off homes and trees. Locals look at the rising level of the Chiquito Tiver, in the La Hoya neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, following the passage of Hurricane Iota on Tuesday, November 17, 2020. The official death toll from Iota in Nicaragua rose to 16 on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.Īs many as 30 people were feared to have been buried in a landslide caused by rain from Iota in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, La Mesa Redonda reported. At least 19 deaths have so far been blamed on Iota. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in a news release Tuesday.Įta caused widespread flooding and landslides that left at least 130 people dead and dozens of others missing or presumed dead. "So this is very much still (a) developing emergency on top of which now slams another emergency with potentially catastrophic consequences," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. The number of people affected by Eta was still going up when Iota brought the second act of this hurricane season's one-two punch to the region. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)Ĭountries hit by Eta were still assessing damage and beginning the recovery process when Iota struck. And now another one is coming.A man looks at a damaged house after the passage of Hurricane Iota, in Bilwi, Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, on Tuesday, Nov. “They left their houses in the middle of the night, abandoned everything, got soaked, carried their children. “We are racing the storm in order to get supplies to these people, because now they can’t leave, they have nowhere to go,” said Sofía Letona, director of Antigua to the Rescue, a local aid group that has distributed food and medicine to hundreds of people displaced by Eta. Now, as Hurricane Iota bears down, teams of rescuers are rushing to reach towns left stranded by Hurricane Eta. Muss said the government had not even been able to gain entry to about 100 villages hit hard by Eta, and noted that about a quarter of those are in critical conditions “because of a lack of food, because of hunger, thirst, and illness.” “I don’t think we have begun to comprehend the impact of this crisis, in terms of the humanitarian disaster.” “If Iota hits with the strength they’re forecasting, it will be chaos,” said Francisco Muss, a retired Guatemalan army general who is coordinating rescue efforts. Entire villages have lost access to potable water, food and medicine, aid groups said. Guatemala is still digging out from Eta, which left hundreds of towns underwater and displaced close to 200,000. Scientists have found that climate change affects how hurricanes form and strengthen, and that rising ocean temperatures linked to global warming can lead storms to weaken more slowly and remain destructive for longer. “If we don’t want to see hordes of Central Americans looking to go to countries with a better quality of life, we have to create walls of prosperity in Central America.” “Hunger, poverty and destruction do not have years to wait,” said Alejandro Giammattei, the Guatemalan leader. Honduras and Guatemala were hammered by Hurricane Eta earlier this month, and both nations are expected to be hard hit by Hurricane Iota. Orlando called on the United Nations to declare Central America as the region most affected by climate change worldwide. “Central America is not the producer of this climate change situation,” the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, said at a news conference. The leaders of Honduras and Guatemala called Monday for an increase in international funding to combat the effects of climate change and to aid their recovery efforts amid recent natural disasters. ![]()
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