A man walks along a flooded highway in Okonwas, Nicaragua, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.Carlos Herrera / AP
It is very premature to calculate the damage that Hurricane Eta has caused in Central America.
Although the cyclone was downgraded from category 4 to a tropical storm early this Wednesday, as it entered Nicaraguan territory, the persistent rains keep the region on alert due to the “potentially fatal” floods, according to the National Hurricane Center of United States.
Preliminarily, the cyclone caused three deaths, two in Nicaragua and one in Honduras.
But the inventory of the disaster is just beginning to rise.
In the northern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, after the passage of gusts of wind of 230 kilometers per hour, neighbors and authorities have begun to assess the damage of Eta and its rapid transit from a tropical storm to a feared cyclone in less than 24 hours.
Bilwi, in Puerto Cabezas, is the worst hit city in Nicaragua.
It was south of this coastal city that the hurricane made landfall.
The powerful gusts of Eta snatched the roofs of houses, overflowed river flows, cut off the roads, uprooted high Caribbean palm trees, knocked down walls and packed churches and shelters with 30,000 refugees, according to the registry of the National System for Prevention , Mitigation and Attention of Disasters (Sinapred).
The gale particularly affected the vulnerable indigenous communities (Miskitos and Mayangnas), who live in remote areas of the northern Caribbean.
The COUNTRY visited some of the shelters set up in the Caribbean region, and the community members complained that no one gave them advance notice of the threat from Eta.
"Many of those who are here evacuated their homes thanks to the radio, because there [in the communities] nobody went to say anything to them," said José Medrano Coleman, a Bilwi neighbor.
Although Eta's arrival was warned since the end of last week, it was not until Monday that the government of Daniel Ortega began the evacuation of some communities after decreeing a red alert for the northern Caribbean.
THE COUNTRY was able to verify that in communities like Río Wawa, the inhabitants sought refuge on their own in houses located on hills.
Indigenous peoples were the most affected by Eta.
Ecologist Salvadora Morales reported that the storm surge almost completely destroyed the community of Wawa Bar, south of the Bilwi coastline.
The dairy farmhouse was left a handful of rubble scrambled with boats ejected furiously by the sea.
“It took all the houses, that tsunami disappeared.
Many lost almost everything, ”Morales lamented.
Although the vice president of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, gave "thanks to God" because Eta was not "so catastrophic in terms of material damage" this Tuesday, the director of the Nicaraguan Institute for Territorial Studies (Ineter) compared the damages of the current cyclone with the Hurricane Juana in 1988. The Sandinista government has not made a final balance of the damage.
While the Sinapred warned that the "danger has not yet passed", since the accumulation of rains can cause floods and landslides.
Many neighbors organized to deliver donations in the Bilwi area, but armed police have prevented the supplies from being collected.
As it moves as a tropical storm through the north of Nicaragua and heads towards Honduras, Eta causes flooding in the communities of Mulukukú, Prinzapolka and areas of the mining triangle (Siuna, Rosita and Bonanza. In the latter place, two miners died from a landslide caused by the waters of the natural phenomenon.
The Humboldt Center warned that Eta will continue to cause rains in the coming days in Nicaragua, Central America, the Mexican southeast, Haiti and the Cayman Islands.
"It is expected that the swells will affect sectors of the Central American coast and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in the coming days," stressed the scientific center from Managua.
In Honduras, the maximum alert remains, after causing the death of a girl who was carried away by a current.
The rains intensify in the Caribbean and eastern Catracho as the tropical storm moves out of Nicaragua.
Eta is expected to enter Honduran territory on Wednesday afternoon, always as a tropical storm.
Although it is not ruled out that in its passage to the Caribbean it may intensify its strength again.
At the same time, in El Salvador, the authorities of the Nayib Bukele government are getting ready for the effects of Eta with a red alert and the authorization of shelters.