Police officers and residents of the Masacahapa seaside resort in the San Rafael del Sur municipality, Nicaragua. Central America suffered a hurricane and offshore earthquake yesterday, triggering alarm in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Managua, Nicaragua: Tropical Storm Otto killed at least four people in Costa Rica and then headed into the Pacific Ocean yesterday after making landfall as the southernmost hurricane on record to hit Central America.
Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis announced that three had been killed in the town of Guayabo de Bagaces, a town south of the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. He said a fourth person in an unspecified location, and that at least six people were missing in the nearby town of Bijagua.
Solis said as much water fell on the area in a few hours as normally falls in a month, and said some people had been trapped by rising waters.
Otto made landfall on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast as a dangerous Category 2 storm but it faded to tropical storm force before emerging over the eastern Pacific early yesterday.
Authorities in Nicaragua said the hurricane had damaged houses, but so far there were no reports of casualties. Earlier, heavy rains from the storm were blamed for three deaths in Panama.
Otto battered Nicaragua’s Corn Islands with 10-feet waves and damaged houses, but residents were all safe in refuges, said the archipelago’s mayor, Cleveland Rolando Webster.
“There is a lot of rain, the sea is rough and the wind is strong. We have been in danger all night, getting cold and wet,” said Alicia Lampson, 21, as she arrived at a shelter with a group of people from the village of Monkey Point, south of Bluefields, Nicaragua.
The US National Hurricane Center said by yesterday morning, the storm was centered about 395km south-southeast of El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, and had maximum sustained winds of 100kph. It was moving towards the west 26kph. It was projected to keep moving westward away from Central America, further into Pacific.
The Nicaraguan government earlier declared a state of emergency, and said evacuations would continue because of the continued risk of flooding. Schools were closed.
Officials in Costa Rica evacuated 2,500 people before hurricane hit and called off school nationwide for rest of the week.
