MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Julia hit Nicaragua’s central Caribbean coast on Sunday after lashing Colombia’s San Andres island, and a weakened storm was expected to emerge over the Pacific.
Julia hit as a Category 1 hurricane early Sunday with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph), though its winds had dipped to 75 mph (120 kph) a few hours later as it pushed across Nicaragua with heavy rains.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Julia was centered about 115 miles (190 kilometers) east of Managua, the capital, and was moving west at 16 mph (26 kph).
It said life-threatening flash floods and mudslides were possible across Central America and southern Mexico through Tuesday, with the storm expected to bring as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain in isolated areas.
At the storm approached San Andres Island east of Nicaragua, Colombian President Gustavo Petro declared a “maximum alert” there as well as Providencia island to the north and asked hotels to prepare space to shelter the vulnerable population. Officials on San Andres imposed a curfew to limit people in the streets. Flights to the islands were suspended.
There were no early reports on Julia’s impact on San Andres.
In Nicaragua, authorities alerted all types of vessels to seek safe harbor.
Guillermo González, director of Nicaragua’s Disaster Response System, told official media that people at high risk had been evacuated from coastal areas by noon Saturday. The army said it delivered humanitarian supplies to Bluefields and Laguna de Perlas for distribution to 118 temporary shelters.
In Bluefields, however, life appeared little changed Saturday night, and people expressed reluctance to leave their homes.
The storm was forecast to sweep across Nicaragua and then emerge over the Pacific and skirt the coasts of El Salvador and Guatemala, a region already saturated by weeks of heavy rains.
In Guatemala, storms since early May had already caused at least 49 confirmed deaths, with six people missing. Roads and hundreds of homes have been damaged, Guatemalan officials say.
In El Salvador, where 19 people have died this rainy season, the worst rainfall was expected Monday and Tuesday, said Fernando López, the minister of environmental and natural resources. Officials said they had opened 61 shelters with the capacity to house more than 3,000 people.
Subscribe here for just .08 cents per day to read subscriber content, join the PVDN newsletter, and browse with site ad-free. Support local news.
Trending news on PVDN
- One of the three bloodiest cells of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel operates in Puerto Vallarta The Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) is one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in Mexico and the world, as it has come to establish operations centers in other countries such as Ecuador, where it has left a trail of violence in its struggle to obtain control of the region. To wage its bloody wars…
- Mexico’s domestic airline industry in shambles MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s domestic airline industry is in shambles, plagued by safety problems, a ratings downgrade by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, and vandalism. This week alone, passengers missed connections because thieves cut the fiber optic cables leading into the Mexico City airport, forcing immigration authorities to return to using slow paper forms.…
- Mexico wants American extradited on charges in tourist death CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (AP) — Mexican prosecutors have filed charges against a U.S. woman suspected of killing another American seen being beaten in a viral video. Prosecutors in the state of Baja California Sur did not name the suspect in the Oct. 29 death of Shanquella Robinson. But on Thursday, they said they had…
- Mexico’s president accused of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel, according to US documents Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, declared that both former president Enrique Peña Nieto and current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( AMLO ) received million-dollar bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.
- Puerto Vallarta tourism will have a historic end of the year This 2022 Puerto Vallarta is on track to have a historic closure as a tourist destination since throughout the year there has been a path of recovery without interruption and will undoubtedly exceed figures from pre-pandemic years. The general director of the Puerto Vallarta Tourism Promotion Trust, Luis Antonio Villaseñor Nolasco, declared that growth has…
