MANAGUA, Nov 3 — Hurricane Eta, one of the most powerful storms to hit Central America in years, struck land in one of the poorest areas of Nicaragua on its Caribbean coast early today, unleashing heavy rains that stoked fears of deadly floods in the region.

The head of Nicaragua’s disaster management agency, Guillermo Gonzalez, said Eta plowed ashore near the port of Puerto Cabezas, pulling roofs off houses, knocking down trees and powerlines, and causing flooding in the region.

Gonzalez told a news conference that Eta had been pummelling the coast with winds and rain since around midnight.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Eta is an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, bringing “catastrophic” winds to Nicaragua.

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Shortly before the Nicaraguan government announced the arrival of the storm, Eta was blowing sustained winds of 233kph, according to the NHC.

The northern indigenous regions directly in Eta’s path are some of Nicaragua’s poorest. Many people nearby live in wooden homes that stand little chance against such a powerful storm.

Late yesterday, Javier Plat, a local Catholic priest, told Reuters there was a city-wide power outage in Puerto Cabezas and government-arranged shelters had reached capacity.

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“This city of 70,000 people is very vulnerable. We have houses made of wood and adobe. The infrastructure of the residential houses is our main vulnerability,” Plat said.

Nicaragua yesterday evacuated at least 3,000 families, including fishermen who live in the most vulnerable villages on the Atlantic coast, officials said.

The storm is forecast to move inland over northern Nicaragua through tomorrow morning and then hit central Honduras on Thursday. Once it clatters into the mountains of Nicaragua and Honduras, it should weaken rapidly, NHC said.

Ortega’s government had issued red alerts in several regions in the path of the hurricane. Yesterday, several ports in neighbouring Honduras, where the government had carried out evacuations, were forced to shut amid reports of floods.

El Salvador also evacuated citizens as a precaution.

Eta is the 28th named tropical storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, tying an all-time record set in 2005, the NHC’s Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch said. — Reuters