Felix Death Toll Washes Up on Coastline

Felix Death Toll Washes Up on Coastline

Joshua S Hill

special to mongabay.com

September 7, 2007

Nicaraguan and Honduran officials have announced that upwards of 100 people are confirmed dead, and another 120 still unaccounted for after Hurricane Felix made landfall earlier this week. Touching down in the extreme north-east of Nicaragua on September the 4th, Hurricane Felix reached Category 5 status with wind-speeds of 160 mph (260 km/h).

The death toll has continued to escalate over the past several days. The most recent discovery of bodies belonging to Miskito Indians found in the Caribbean off the coast of Central America are believed to be from a boat that was caught in the monster seas as Felix swept through.

Local fishermen have also reported that they have witnessed dead still tied to trees in what would have been a vain attempt to stay safe from the winds. It is also believed that villagers were sucked away from their beach side shacks to eventually drown in the squalls.

Hurricane Felix was approaching the Central American coastline on September 4, 2007, when the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) captured the data used to make this image shortly after midnight local time (06:04 UTC). The image shows rainfall rates within the powerful storm overlaid on a visible image of the storm. Areas in which rainfall is heaviest are red, while regions of lighter rainfall are blue.

At the time that TRMM observed Felix, the storm was strengthening from Category 4 to Category 5 status with sustained winds near 215 kilometers per hour (135 miles per hour), according to the National Hurricane Center. Felix developed very rapidly. The storm formed on the evening of August 31 and had grown into a hurricane by the next day. By September 2, Felix had become a rare Category 5 storm. It was the second Category 5 storm to make landfall in as many weeks.

Image produced by Hal Pierce (SSAI/NASA GSFC).

This is the first time on recent record that two Atlantic storms have both made landfall as a Category 5 system within the same system. Locals were vividly reminded of Hurricane Mitch, which killed 10,000 people in 1998 and devastated the coastal villages of the Miskito Indians.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced that some 10,000 homes were destroyed, with 50,000 people apparently having lost everything they owned. “It is worse than we previously thought,” he said during a meeting with government and military officials on Thursday.

After effects of the storm are continuing to affect Central America, with fear of flooding as rain continues to steadily fall. Already two people have been killed in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa after the streets and markets were flooded.