Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Hurricane Ida floods kill 50 in El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR: Torrential rains caused by Hurricane Ida have killed at least 50 people and left several others missing in El Salvador, civil protection officials said on Sunday.

Ida, churning in the western Caribbean, was barrelling towards Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula early on Sunday, bringing torrential rains and flooding of up to four feet above sea level in some areas. “Unfortunately we have to report the number of dead has increased because of the rains, we now count 50 individuals,” the head of El Salvador’s civil protection service, Jorge Melendez told AFP.

Forecasters said flooding was also possible in Western Cuba, and the US National Weather Service in Miami Florida said Ida was expected to produce “large and destructive waves” across the affected region. The NHC warned rains could produce flashfloods and mudslides in Central America and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the death toll from tropical storm Mirinae in central Vietnam has passed 122, with damage estimated at more than five billion dong (about $280 million), officials said. Two people were still missing, according to a new report by the national flood and storm control committee, which also listed 145 injured.

The toll however did not include victims of a landslide, which killed at least 13 people on Thursday. According to national statistics, Mirinae damaged or toppled more than 100,000 houses. Several hundred thousand hectares (acres) of cultivated land was also damaged or submerged in the passage of the storm. The priority was still “to supply disaster victims with food, drinking water and to sort out problems related to pollution of the environment,” an official from the national committee told AFP on Sunday. Mirinae weakened from a typhoon before it hit Vietnam Monday, after killing at least 27 people in the Philippines. afp

Source: dailytimes.com.pk

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