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Central America Picks Up After Felix

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By ARIEL LEON, The Associated Press

Published: September 6, 2007

PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua - Doctors threw together a makeshift clinic Wednesday to tend to the injured after powerful Hurricane Felix flooded their hospital and wrecked villages on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. Remnants of the storm drenched Central America, and the death toll rose to 18, with dozens more missing.

Far to the northwest, Hurricane Henriette took aim at Mexico for the second time in two days, its center making landfall Wednesday night near the port city of Guaymas with top winds of 75 mph. It was later downgraded to a tropical storm with winds of 65 mph. Seven deaths were reported from the Pacific storm, which hit Baja California on Tuesday.

Nicaragua was flying food and emergency supplies to the regional capital of Puerto Cabezas, but said help had not yet reached villages cut off when Felix roared ashore Tuesday as a Category 5 hurricane.

The dead included a man who drowned when his boat capsized, a woman killed when a tree fell on her house and a newborn who died shortly after birth because her mother couldn't get medical attention.

Among the missing were four fishermen whose small sailboat sank as Felix's center passed overhead. A survivor, Fernando Pereira, 24, said he clung to a piece of wood for 12 hours, despite a dislocated shoulder, and washed ashore at the village of Sandy Bay only hours after Felix made landfall there.

'I felt horrible,' he said. 'I was drinking salt water, and I thought I was going to die.'

Others were caught in the sea as well. Jelivaro Climax, 22, said he had to swim through enormous waves to reach shore.

'Lightning flashed through a pitch black sky,' he said. 'I swam with everything I had, and I was sure the sea would take me.'

Felix swept over the Mosquito Coast, an impoverished region where about 150,000 people live in jungle settlements. Their hamlets of wooden shacks and coconut groves are remote even in good weather, reachable only by air or flat-bottom boats.

The descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves, the inhabitants live semiautonomously, much like people on American Indian reservations.

There wasn't enough fuel after the storm for boats to make long trips, and Felix snapped steel cables that guided a small ferry carrying people and cars from Puerto Cabezas to the village of Wawahum.

Johana Aliberto Maquiave, 36, was stuck in Puerto Cabezas, trying to get back to her family in Sandy Bay, the village where the eye of the storm hit.

'I want to know what happened to my three children,' she said, fighting tears. 'The poor kids stayed with their dad. I am here with nothing. I came on Sunday to buy food.'

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