Iota, a hurricane turned tropical storm, was on the way to dissipation Wednesday, November 18 in El Salvador after killing at least 28 people and causing enormous damage in Central America, already devastated two weeks ago by Hurricane Eta.
On Wednesday, Nicaraguan authorities announced a new provisional death toll of 18, including 7 children in a landslide and in flooding.
Tens of thousands of people are still isolated, without drinking water or electricity.
Iota also killed 6 people in Honduras, one in Panama, one in El Salvador and two others in a Colombian Caribbean archipelago.
Read also: Central America: nearly 180 dead or missing after Hurricane Eta
The Salvadoran environment ministry announced that, according to forecasts, Iota had lost its intensity during its passage through the country.
But heavy rains continued to fall in northern Nicaragua.
After amassing energy in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, Iota made landfall in that country on Monday as a Category 5 hurricane, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
It was then accompanied by strong winds sometimes reaching 260 km / hour, according to the American hurricane monitoring center, the NHC, which is headquartered in Miami (Florida).
A government official in the northern Nicaraguan region of the Caribbean, Yamil Zapata, said on Wednesday that Iota had hit infrastructure hard in Bilwi, the main city in that part of Nicaragua.
This hurricane
"arrived and finished"
destroying everything
"what
(hurricane)
Eta had left standing"
only a fortnight ago, explained Yamil Zapata, adding that many homes were damaged.
“The damage is really important,”
Yamil Zapata told local media.
Bilwi, which has more than 40,000 inhabitants, was however able to recover the use of cell phones on Tuesday and the victims began to clean up the rubble on Wednesday.
Thirty tropical storms this season
"There is nothing, the hurricane took away all the houses that were on the coast," said
Esteban Moore, who himself lost his house.
In Bilwi the inhabitants wander among the rubble and describe scenes worthy of a
"horror film"
during the passage of Iota which struck the region to the maximum of its destructive power.
In total, more than 110,000 homes are without electricity and more than 47,000 no longer have running water, according to the Nicaraguan authorities.
Heavy rains also fell in Guatemala, where the previous hurricane left 46 people dead and 96 missing, with rivers swollen and trees fallen on the roads, but no casualties, according to the authorities.
In Colombia, two people were killed and another was reported missing on two Colombian islands, Santa Catalina and Providencia, where much of the infrastructure was destroyed.
In Panama, a woman has died and some 2,000 people are staying in shelters, authorities said.
To read also: Typhoon, hurricane, cyclone?
Four graphics to understand
Flooding and flash floods could continue in Central America through Thursday due to torrential rains, according to the NHC.
Eta made landfall on November 3 in Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane. It killed at least 200 people and affected 2.5 million people in Central America.
Warming seas caused by climate change make hurricanes stronger for longer after they make landfall, scientists say.
A record thirty tropical storms have been recorded this season in the Caribbean, Central America and the Southeastern United States.
The heads of state of Central American countries have accused industrialized countries of being responsible for global warming.
They together presented a request for reconstruction aid to international financial organizations on Monday.
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