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Hurricane Otto Hits Nicaragua, Costa Rica as Quake Shakes Region

Hurricane Otto Hits Nicaragua, Costa Rica as Quake Shakes Region
folder_openLatin America access_time7 years ago
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Hurricane Otto battered Nicaragua and Costa Rica with powerful winds and torrential rains on Friday, damaging homes, forcing thousands to evacuate and causing an undetermined number of deaths.

Hurricane Otto Hits Nicaragua, Costa Rica as Quake Shakes Region

The hurricane, which weakened rapidly after hitting the southeastern coast of Nicaragua, became a tropical storm by early Friday, the US National Hurricane Center said, as dangerous flooding continued in both countries.

In Costa Rica, President Luis Guillermo Solis said late Thursday there had been a number of deaths, but added it was too early to say how many people had died.

"I regret to inform you ... that there are people dead and missing," Solis told a news conference.

Otto, the seventh Atlantic hurricane of the season, landed north of the town of San Juan de Nicaragua as a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, the Miami-based hurricane center said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from its path.

It weakened to a tropical storm, with top sustained winds of 70 mph [113 kph], about 55 miles [89 km] northwest of Liberia, Costa Rica.

Soon after the storm landed, a 7.0 magnitude quake struck 93 miles [149 km] southwest of Puerto Triunfo, El Salvador, at a depth of 6.4 miles [10.3 km], the US Geological Survey said.

There were no reports of major damage from the quake in El Salvador, but local emergency services ordered the coastal population to withdraw up to 0.6 mile [1 km] from the shore.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared a state of emergency because of the storm and the quake, his spokeswoman and wife Rosario Murillo said.

Nicaraguan civil protection officials said the hurricane, which was moving west at 13 mph [21 kph], damaged homes and telephone lines but had not reported any victims as of early Friday morning.

In Bluefields, a city in Nicaragua's southeastern Mosquito Coast, rainfall began early in the morning. Hundreds were moved to storm shelters by Thursday evening.

"We left because we don't want to die. We love our lives," said 53-year-old Carmen Alvarado, who was hunkering down in a school in Bluefields. She was among the 206 people evacuated from the coastal community of El Bluff.

"The fear there is that we were surrounded by water," said Senelia Aragon, 42, standing next to Alvarado, preparing a breakfast of flour tortillas with beans.

Bluefields, once an infamous pirate haunt, was smashed by Hurricane Joan in 1988, a devastating Category 4 storm that destroyed many of the town's 19th century wooden houses.

On the Corn Islands, which face Bluefields and are popular with tourists, 1,400 people were evacuated to shelters, with 1,000 more moved from Punta Gorda, which lies south along the coast from Bluefields, local emergency services said.

Government officials said there had been people along the country's southeast coast who refused to evacuate, but the officials declined to say how many.

Total rainfall of 6 to 12 inches [15 to 30 cm], with isolated amounts of 15 to 20 inches [38 to 50 cm], was expected across northern Costa Rica and southern Nicaragua through Friday morning.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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