MEXICO CITY: More than 40 people are dead in Central and South America in the wake of Iota, the storm that has ravaged the region in recent days, according to figures on Thursday.
A death that was confirmed in Panama raised the death toll to 41. It includes at least 18 victims in Nicaragua, 15 in Honduras, three in Panama, two in Colombia, two in Guatemala and one in El Salvador. Iota struck Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast on Monday as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 250 kilometres per hour. It later weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm.
The storm had dissipated by Thursday, but its humidity was still bringing some rains and causing landslides.
In Honduras, where more than 2 million people were affected by Iota, residents continued being evacuated from risk areas.
The civil protection agency COPECO was trying to "access areas where several places have been left isolated, without food and water,” Jaime Omar Silva from the agency told radio station HRN.
A death that was confirmed in Panama raised the death toll to 41. It includes at least 18 victims in Nicaragua, 15 in Honduras, three in Panama, two in Colombia, two in Guatemala and one in El Salvador. Iota struck Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast on Monday as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 250 kilometres per hour. It later weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm.
The storm had dissipated by Thursday, but its humidity was still bringing some rains and causing landslides.
In Honduras, where more than 2 million people were affected by Iota, residents continued being evacuated from risk areas.
The civil protection agency COPECO was trying to "access areas where several places have been left isolated, without food and water,” Jaime Omar Silva from the agency told radio station HRN.