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Hurricane Mitch
Hurricane Mitch had struck land on the 27th of
October and has caused a lot of devastation to
the landscape and the people. As Hurricane
Mitch tore across Central America, the most
deadly Atlantic storm in two centuries left a trail
of destruction in its wake.Ê
The hurricane began in the Caribbean Sea and it
reaches land, passed over Central America before
dying out over Mexico. The main countries that
were in the hurricanes path were: Honduras,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize.
Whilst Mitch was one of the strongest Atlantic
hurricanes on record. It was actually the huge
amount of rainfall deposited by such a slow moving
storm which caused most of the damage. Most
rainfall recordingÊinstruments would have been
destroyed during the storm. However, Jon Hellin
from the Natural Resources Institute said some
records which survived indicated rainfall totals in
Southern Honduras of 25" in 36 hours and 10" in 6
hours between 29 and 31 October.
Effects Of The Hurricane
The effects of the hurricane were dreadful about
10,000 are believed to have been killed, with
Nicaragua and Honduras bearing the brunt of the
storm. Development in some of the western
hemisphere's poorest countries has been set back by
as much as 50 years.
The worst hit country was Honduras, in which the
death toll estimate of 5,657deaths and more than
8,000 people are still unaccounted for.Ê The effects
on the landscape were equally bad with, incessant
rain flooded at least 50 rivers, knocking out bridges
and roads and inundating many towns in its path.
Ambassadors also from the region of where the
hurricane hit warned a United Nations meeting in
New York that famine and disease - such as cholera
and malaria - were a grave threat to the people.
Help On Its Way
The Red Cross and countries including the United
States, Britain, Spain and Norway have provided
some aid to the region..
The international community is offering help, with
some several million dollars coming from the
United States and the European Union. US
President Bill Clinton said his country had
provided $2m in food, medicine, water and other
emergency relief supplies, and the European Union
has offered more than $8m worth of aid.
Meanwhile UN World Food said that it had
distributed over 100,000 tons of food previously
earmarked for development projects in Nicaragua
and was distributing food in Honduras.
Additionally, UNICEF said it had provided
$20,000 worth of medicine to Nicaragua and was
shipping 500,000 sachets of oral rehydration salts,
used in cases of diarrhea and cholera.
However, Mr Ortega Urbina, who is the
Ambassador of Nicaragua, says that this is not
enough and that his country desperately needs more
assistance. The Nicaraguan ambassador, also said,
³We will not have crops for the next six months so
there will be hunger´
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prevent a huge tide of economic migrants heading
for the US.