Storms Central America

As desperation turned to anger among tropical storm Mitch's survivors, Central American governments went on the defensive Thursday. Officials throughout the region tried to explain the delays in evacuating flooded areas during the storm and the current holdups in bringing food and medicine to survivors isolated by collapsed bridges and washed-out roads.

The Honduran government declared a national "red alert" Wednesday as Tropical Storm Michelle formed over the Caribbean, bringing torrential rains and flooding that left more than two dozen people dead or missing in the region and forced tens of thousands from their homes. Four people were confirmed dead and seven were missing after rivers overflowed their banks in coastal areas of Honduras following several days of heavy rain, officials said.

Maria Corina Artola has never been wealthy or even financially comfortable. But Friday, she was the poorest she has ever been. Little by little over the years, she had established herself as a street vendor, earning enough to support her four children in a shack along an open sewer. That was until tropical storm Mitch washed it all away.

Torrential rain and floods knocked down two bridges along the Pan-American Highway, blocking overland traffic throughout Central America, authorities in Honduras and Nicaragua said Sunday. Dozens of people have been reported drowned in the past three weeks, and tens of thousands have had to evacuate their flooded homes since the unusually heavy rain started in early September.

In what the government called "a humanitarian response to the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Mitch," the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said Friday that it was temporarily halting the deportation of Honduran, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran and Guatemalan nationals. Deportations to those flood-ravaged Central American nations will be suspended at least until Nov. 23, said Bill Strassberger, an INS spokesman.

Tropical Storm Gert killed at least 28 people in Nicaragua and Honduras and left more than 15,000 homeless before moving out to sea, officials said. It gathered strength as it moved over the Caribbean toward Belize and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, reports said. Authorities in Nicaragua said heavy rains and flooding left at least eight people dead and 10,400 homeless there before Gert crossed into neighboring Honduras. In Honduras, at least 20 people were reported killed and 5,000 left homeless.

Honduras announced that it suspended a governor for inflating her region's death toll from Hurricane Mitch. It also lowered its official death count by 1,350 people. The new death toll of 5,657 was compiled after the government sent teams to verify regional reports. The governor, Lucila Esperanza Barahona de Castro of the Santa Barbara region, was suspended after investigators could only verify 282 of the 1,159 deaths reported in her area.

The Clinton administration and international donor organizations, heeding a warning from four Central American presidents that the ravages of Hurricane Mitch are endangering democracy in their countries, pledged more than $1 billion Thursday in relief and interest-free loans to the devastated region. "You are our neighbors, our friends, our partners," Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat said during an emergency meeting of the visiting presidents and a group of donor organizations.

With a sum of $400 million, Honduras could get a start on rebuilding the 88 bridges that tropical storm Mitch destroyed or damaged on its rampage through Central America. Or it could construct housing for some of its 1.4 million citizens who lost their homes. Or, Honduras could make the regular annual payment on its $4.1 billion foreign debt.

Grieving crowds jammed morgues and hospitals in search of missing loved ones here Tuesday as Honduran officials raised their estimate of the death toll from Hurricane Mitch to 7,000 in their nation alone. Meanwhile, the onetime hurricane, which killed more than 9,000 people throughout Central America, advanced across the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, though its 45-mph winds were a shadow of the 180-mph monster of last week.

Torrential rains that have pelted Central America for two weeks threatened Honduras' major dam Saturday, forcing the evacuation of more than 100,000 people downstream. The entire region has suffered from massive flooding that has killed 13 people and destroyed millions of dollars' worth of crops and buildings, many in areas devastated by Tropical Storm Mitch less than a year ago.

Hundreds of tons of hurricane aid from Los Angeles are stacked up in metal containers under the hot sun at this small port. An hour's drive away, thousands of victims--barefoot children with swollen bellies, a mother cooking beans in an old paint can--are barely surviving in makeshift refugee camps. Long delays in getting help to Hurricane Mitch victims are not what Nicole Wool and thousands of other Los Angeles donors had in mind.

It was a sure sign of trouble when Wilmer Pineda's sixth-grade teacher frantically knocked on his door at twilight. He just didn't know how much trouble. The Las Flores and San Juan rivers that met a block from his house were rising rapidly, the teacher reported. His family had to flee. That night last October, tropical storm Mitch washed away Wilmer's home, his school and his future. Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans face similar losses from the storm, which killed 9,000 people.

Dangerously shifting rapids and a shore lined with eerily shaped boulders led Patuca River folk to call this narrow canyon the Gates of Hell, even before the deluge from tropical storm Mitch swelled the river and crushed their cabins like matchsticks. Within a couple of weeks, by mid-November, the river had settled back into its channel, but the power of the flood waters left a landscape so altered that even people who grew up here say they get lost now.

Three months after Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America, 675 tons of supplies bound for Nicaragua--including badly needed medicine--are still sitting in Los Angeles warehouses for lack of money. The aid "is desperately needed," said Silvio Mendez, Nicaraguan consul in Los Angeles. "It's not doing anyone any good here."

Stranded for weeks by bureaucratic red tape, thousands of pounds of relief supplies destined for victims of Hurricane Mitch were finally loaded aboard a Mexican cargo ship Wednesday to begin the voyage to Central America. Officials at the Port of San Francisco said 30 containers full of medical supplies, food, grains, mattresses and clothing were put aboard the Leon of Transportacion Maritima Mexicana. They said other shipments would take place later in the week.

Since Hurricane Mitch ripped through Central America, flooding villages and sweeping away homes, Christina Felipe Ramirez has not heard from her sister Gloria, who works on a banana plantation in a village near Guatemala's southeastern border.

After leaving at least 45 people dead in Colombia and Venezuela, Hurricane Joan sent thousands of people fleeing for safety Thursday as it inched toward Central America's eastern coastline with heavy rains and 105-m.p.h. winds. Clinging stubbornly to a due-westerly course far south of the Caribbean's traditional storm paths, the hurricane forced authorities in Nicaragua and Costa Rica to close schools and hospitals in preparation for rare national emergencies.

Rio Vista Elementary School students raised $1,703.50 for hurricane victims in Honduras. Principal Kjell Taylor recently presented the money to the American Red Cross. The school decided to raise cash donations because of the problems of transporting goods to Honduras. Students were asked to bring $1 and administrators $10--and the school surpassed its goal by $200. John F. Kennedy High School juniors in Scott Burns' and Amy Blanks' U.S.

Lupe Ventura's last Christmas was one of modest abandon: a pricey Super Nintendo set for her five children in Los Angeles, cartons of toys for nieces and nephews in Guatemala City and even a gleaming ring as a special treat for herself. But this year's shopping cart was decidedly barren, fallout from a devastating storm that spared her Guatemalan family's health and home, but stung them sharply with skyrocketing prices.