Hurricane Otto hits Nicaragua

hurricane-otto

Hurricane Otto battered Nicaragua and Costa Rica with powerful winds and torrential rains on Friday, damaging homes, forcing thousands to evacuate and causing an undetermined number of deaths.

“The hurricane, which weakened rapidly after hitting the south-eastern coast of Nicaragua, became a tropical storm,’’ the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said, as dangerous flooding continued in both countries.

In Costa Rica, President Luis Guillermo Solis said on Thursday that there had been a number of deaths, but added it was too early to say how many people had died.

“I regret to inform you that there are people dead and missing,’’ Solis told a news conference.

The Miami-based hurricane centre said Otto, the seventh Atlantic hurricane of the season, landed north of the town of San Juan de Nicaragua as a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity.

However, thousands of people were evacuated from its path.

It weakened to a tropical storm, with top sustained winds of 70 mph (113 kph), about 89 km northwest of Liberia, Costa Rica.

“Soon after the storm landed, a 7.0 magnitude quake struck 149 km southwest of Puerto Triunfo, El Salvador, at a depth of 10.3 km,’’ the U.S. Geological Survey said.

There were no reports of major damage from the quake in El Salvador, but local emergency services ordered the coastal population to withdraw up to 1 km from the shore.

“Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared a state of emergency because of the storm and the quake,’’ his spokeswoman and wife Rosario Murillo said.

Nicaraguan civil protection officials said the hurricane, which was moving west at 13 mph (21 kph), damaged homes and telephone lines but had not reported any victims as of Friday morning.