PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua -
Hurricane Felix roared ashore early Tuesday near this town as a fearsome Category 5 storm, flattening coastal areas before weakening to a still powerful Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds as it headed over land.
Felix made landfall with 160 mph winds — joining Hurricane Dean last month to mark the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms have come ashore in the same season.
"The situation is chaotic. Puerto Cabezas is being totally destroyed," said Antonio Joya, a regional government official. "I'm sure it is going to be a total disaster."
Uprooted trees flew through the air as thousands took shelter in two schools in the port, home to some 30,000 mostly Miskito Indians. Ambulances with sirens blaring raced through the streets.
The storm hit near the swampy Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians dependent on canoes to make their way to safety.
"The wind is terrible. There's a roaring when it pulls the roofs off the houses," Lumberto Campbell, a local official in Puerto Cabezas, told Radio Ya. "There's no electricity because all the posts that hold up the cables have fallen down.
"The metal roofs come off like shaving knives and are sent flying against the trees and homes," he said before the line cut off.
Twenty fishermen were missing, and communication to the area was cut off.
Mudslides fearedThe area around Puerto Cabezas is sparsely populated and dotted with lagoons and marshes, but the storm threatened many poor Honduran and Guatemalan villages further inland that are perched on hillsides and vulnerable to mudslides.
Up to 40,000 Hondurans were evacuated to shelters, but some 15,000 people were unable to find transportation and were forced to ride out the storm in their homes.
“They couldn’t be evacuated because there is no fuel to take them to safe areas,” said Carolina Echeverria, a lawmaker from Cabo Gracias a Dios on the border with Nicaragua, where Felix landed.
Felix's landfall marked the first time that two Category 5 hurricanes have hit land in a season since 1886, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hurricane Dean also came ashore just last month as a Category 5 storm. Only 31 such storms have been recorded in the Atlantic, including eight in the last five seasons.
"This is an extremely dangerous and potentially catastrophic hurricane. We just hope everybody has taken the precautions necessary to protect life and property," Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said Tuesday.
Henriette now a hurricaneMeanwhile, off Mexico's Pacific coast, Tropical Storm Henriette strengthened into a hurricane with 75 mph winds and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was churning toward the upscale resort of Cabo San Lucas, popular with Hollywood stars and sea fishing enthusiasts.
Henriette was on a path to hit the tip of the Baja California Peninsula on Tuesday afternoon. The had sustained winds of 75 mph.
At 8 a.m. ET it was centered about 80 miles south-southeast of the peninsula.
Before dawn Tuesday, strong waves pounded the resort's beaches, rain fell in sheets and strong winds whipped palm trees. More than 100 residents spent the night in makeshift shelters as the storm approached, and more were expected to leave their homes Tuesday.
On Monday, police in Cabo San Lucas said one woman drowned in high surf stirred up by Henriette. Over the weekend, the storm caused flooding and landslides that killed six people in Acapulco.
source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20546847/#storyContinued
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