Hurricane Eta leaves behind a bleak picture in Central America

The Eta tropical depression left a desolate landscape in northern Guatemala this Friday, with dozens of villages under water from flooding and at least 150 people dead or missing in various incidents.

The main concern of Guatemalan authorities in recent hours has centred on a village in the department of Alta Verapaz in the north of the country, where 150 homes are presumed to have been buried by an avalanche.

The village, called Quejá, is located 205 kilometres north of Guatemala City and due to its remote location access has been complicated for the authorities, both by road due to various landslides and by air due to the cloudiness of the sector.

"The panorama is complicated in the area," said Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei at a press conference at midday this Friday.

So far only one brigade of the Guatemalan army has managed to advance to the village, after walking for 12 hours through a mountainous area, and according to details provided by the military institution, around 100 people have lost their lives in the 150 buried houses.

The relief corps has struggled to reach the village, but landslides have prevented at least 60 rescuers from advancing eight kilometres from the village, according to local media reports.

The Guatemalan president said, however, that the figure of 150 dead and missing is "unofficial" pending further information.

The latest official update of data by the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction (Conred) indicates that eight people have lost their lives due to the rains caused by Eta and another 18 are missing since the weather phenomenon entered Central America on Tuesday.

The official deaths and disappearances have been recorded mainly due to landslides in the department of Alta Verapaz (north), but also in Huehuetenango (northwest), Quiché (northwest) and Guatemala (centre).
 

In the early hours of this Friday, thousands of Guatemalans were isolated, waiting for help in various departments in the north of the country.

Civil protection authorities and the Guatemalan army told journalists that a large number of people in the departments of Izabal, Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz have been protected from flooding on the roofs of their homes and at other high altitudes.

By means of "air operations" with a Bell 412 helicopter, the military rescued a family of six people trapped on a farm in Izabal during the morning, as Colonel Rubén Téllez, the organisation's communications director, explained to journalists.

"We hope to begin more evacuations very soon," added Téllez, who also pointed out that four more "ration distribution" flights have been made from the air in three villages in the department.

The rains have caused millions of dollars in losses of infrastructure and agricultural land, according to the Guatemalan government and local media in Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz and Izabal, where they warn that thousands of people have lost everything in a desolate landscape.

According to Conred, the rains in Eta have generated 179 incidents in the country among landslides, bridges destroyed and villages affected, without further specific details.

Civil protection authorities also reported that 943 homes have been damaged and 134 homes are at risk, so 4,625 have been evacuated and another 4,724 have been housed in Conred shelters.

On Thursday afternoon, the Guatemalan government decreed a 'state of calamity' in eight of the country's 22 departments due to the damage caused by the tropical depression.

The departments most affected at the moment by the tropical depression Eta and where the state of calamity - which regulates certain freedoms - was decreed for 30 days are Izabal, Petén, Quiché, Alta Verapaz, Zacapa, El Progreso, Jutiapa and Santa Rosa, corresponding to the north, northeast and east of the Central American country.

Eta made landfall last Tuesday in Nicaragua as a powerful hurricane and after arriving in Honduras as a tropical depression finally left Central America this Friday. However, its destructive passage has left just over 150 dead or missing in Guatemala and at least twenty on the isthmus.

The Eta weather phenomenon, first as a hurricane and then as a tropical depression, has been hitting Central America since Tuesday, causing a tragedy whose magnitude is growing as emergency systems reach the affected areas, where they recover bodies and see destruction.

Central America, with some 50 million inhabitants, is a territory with Atlantic and Pacific coasts, volcanoes and mountains, on whose slopes poor and rural communities stand, making it one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to natural disasters.

The Government of Honduras has called on the international community to provide humanitarian and financial assistance to the country to deal with the emergency following the passage of Eta, which left some twenty people dead and millions of dollars in losses to infrastructure and the economy that have not yet been quantified.

Some of the thousands of people affected were leaving their communities with what they could carry: suitcases, their children, chickens or mattresses, waiting to set up in a shelter.

Hundreds of affected people are being cared for in schools, community centres and other spaces converted into shelters, where there are people of all ages, while health authorities are calling on the affected population to continue wearing masks to prevent covid-19, which many people leaving flooded areas are not wearing.

On the other hand, in Panama the number of deaths due to the rains that have hit the west of the country especially rose this Friday to at least eight, while there are "68 people not located," said the authorities, who have not yet been able to reach communities that have been isolated by landslides or the destruction of roads.

Panamanian Security Minister Juan Pino told a press conference that 2,063 people have been affected by the rains and 757 have been rescued or evacuated.

This Friday, three helicopters and a 42-person team from the Southern Command's Joint Task Force Bravo (JTF-Bravo) joined the search, rescue and evacuation efforts in Panama, the US Embassy reported.

In El Salvador, one person was reported dead and almost 2,000 evacuated, while in Costa Rica the number of deaths due to the rains associated with Eta remains at two.

The hurricane advanced this Friday through the Caribbean towards the Cayman Islands, Cuba and Florida (United States with maximum winds of 55 km/h and forecast to become a storm in the next few hours.

At 00.00 GMT, Eta was about 160 miles (225 km) from Belize City and about 320 miles (515 km) from Grand Cayman, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The Eta rains and the 11th cold front have left at least 80,000 affected and 21 dead as of this Friday in southeast Mexico, two by drowning in Tabasco and 19 in Chiapas, the Civil Protection system updated.

The now tropical depression is moving northeast at a speed of eight miles per hour (13 km/h). The NHC has issued a tropical storm warning for the Cayman Islands, which Eta will approach this Saturday, as well as the Cuban provinces of Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila, Sancti Spiritus, Villa Clara, Cienfuegos and Matanzas.

He has recommended the northwest Bahamas, the Keys and south Florida to remain attentive to the course of this system.

Eta's trajectory indicates that after approaching the Cayman Islands, it will approach Cuba on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Further strengthening of its winds is expected on Sunday when it is en route to the Keys and the Florida peninsula.

Miami authorities today asked the population "to have basic supplies and knowledge about what to do before the storm. A prolonged period of heavy rains and winds is expected over much of South Florida over the next few days.