Eta tore Central America apart, leaving death and destruction in its wake.
Guatemala City:
About 150 people have died or have still not been found in Guatemala due to landslides caused by powerful storm Eta, which buried an entire village, President Alejandro Giammattei said on Friday.
The toll comes in addition to some 20 people who have died elsewhere in Central America since Eta made landfall in Nicaragua on Tuesday in the form of a hurricane.
Giammattei said an army unit had arrived in the northern village of Queja to begin rescue efforts.
A preliminary report from the troops said “150 houses were buried with 100 dead,” he said.
Giammattei added that another landslide in the northeastern department of Huehuetenango, on the border with Mexico, left 10 people dead.
“We have calculated that between the dead and the missing, the unofficial figures are around 150 dead,” Giammattei said.
He said the situation in Queja was “critical”, with heavy rains continuing to fall and causing more landslides, while roads are still blocked.
Some 2,500 residents of the impoverished indigenous Mayan region lost their belongings in the mud deluge.
Risk of “flash flood”
Eta has torn Central America apart, leaving death and destruction in its wake since it first rocked Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane.
Two days later, it left Honduras as a tropical depression, although weather forecasts warned that it could turn into a tropical storm again as it headed for Cuba.
Cuba began taking measures on Friday to mitigate Eta’s impact. He must strike on Sunday.
Despite Eta’s loss of power, the US National Hurricane Center continued to warn of “life-threatening flash floods” over parts of Central America.
The storm brought heavy rains that caused fatal flooding in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama.
Two people died in Nicaragua, where Eta tore up impoverished coastal areas and swept away entire villages.
Landslides in Panama have buried two houses in the province of Chiriqui, on the Costa Rican border, killing five people, the National Protection System said. Among the victims, three children.
The storm also destroyed houses, roads, bridges and plantations in Chiriqui.
Landslides claimed the lives of two children in Honduras, emergency services reported.
In Costa Rica, a 71-year-old American and his Costa Rican wife died when a landslide buried their home in the southern township of Coto Brus, on the border with Panama.
About 1,400 people from the southern coastal regions and the Pacific were taken to shelters after heavy rains saw rivers breaking their banks and flooding large areas.
A fisherman was killed Thursday in El Salvador, where authorities evacuated 1,700 people whose homes were at risk of flooding, the civil protection agency said.
Guatemala had previously reported 50 dead Thursday, including two children aged 11 and 2, whose fragile family home had been washed away, according to the local civil protection organization.
As the surface layer of the oceans warms due to climate change, hurricanes become more powerful and carry more water, posing a growing threat to coastal communities around the world, scientists say.
Storm surges amplified by rising seas can be particularly devastating.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
