Hurricane Felix, a potentially catastrophic storm with 260-km- per-hour winds, threatened yesterday to plow along the Caribbean coast of Honduras and dump torrential rain across Central America.
Felix, the second hurricane of the 2007 season, and like last month's Hurricane Dean a top-ranked Category 5 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, maintained its deadly power overnight as it roared swiftly westward over the warm waters of the Caribbean.
Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize posted hurricane alerts. Tropical storm alerts remained in effect for Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, although Felix was expected to stay well to their south.
Category 5 hurricanes, which can cause catastrophic damage, are considered rare.
But there were four of them in the devastating 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, including Katrina, and having two of them in a row tear through the Caribbean this year could boost claims that global warming may produce stronger tropical cyclones.
Honduras, where Hurricane Mitch killed thousands in 1998 declared an alert in five northern departments and began preparing shelters and setting up rescue teams.
"We are faced with a very serious threat to lives and property. The most important thing is that people pay heed to the call for evacuation so that we don't have to count bodies later," said Marco Burgos, head of Honduras' civil protection agency.
By 11 am EDT (1500 GMT), Felix was around 585 km east of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaraguan/Honduras border and speeding westward at 33 kph, a brisk pace for a storm, the US National Hurricane Center said.
It was a small storm, with hurricane force winds only extending out around 48 km from its center. Tropical storm force winds could be felt 185 km from the core where the most destructive winds are located.
There were signs of some slight weakening but fluctuations in strength are normal for such intense storms, the Miami-based hurricane center said.
Its rains might be as severe a threat as its ferocious winds. Felix was expected to drop 12.7 to 20.3 cm of rain across northern Honduras and northeastern Nicaragua. In some areas, 30.5 cm of rain could fall, possibly producing dangerous flashfloods and mudslides.
In 1974, Hurricane Fifi killed up to 8,000 people in Honduras after grazing the Caribbean coast and dumping up to 61 cm of rain on the northern mountains, sending rivers over their banks.
Much of the area where Felix was due to pass in Honduras was sparsely populated lowland where roads are few and often inundated at this time of year. Travel is by plane or boat along the many rivers that crisscross the territory.
The storm was also due to brush past the Bay Islands, off the northern Honduran coast, which are popular with foreign tourists for diving and snorkeling.
The computer models used to predict a storm's future track had originally forecast that Felix would slam into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, like Dean, which killed 27 people in the Caribbean in August.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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