Toll From Felix Rises In Central America

Hurricane Claims 18 Lives In Nicaragua, 60 injured; Hurricane Henriette Makes Second Mexican Landfall

(AP)  Doctors threw together a makeshift clinic Wednesday to tend to the injured after powerful Hurricane Felix flooded their hospital and wrecked villages on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast.

Remnants of the storm drenched Central America in rain as the death toll rose to 18 in Nicaragua, with at least 11 people missing and 60 injured.

Far to the northwest, Hurricane Henriette plowed into Mexico for the second time in two days, making landfall shortly before 9 p.m. EDT near the port city of Guaymas with top sustained winds of 75 mph. Seven deaths were reported from the Pacific storm, which hit Baja California on Tuesday.

Nicaragua was flying food and other emergency supplies to the regional capital of Puerto Cabezas, but said help had not yet reached villages cut off when Felix roared ashore Tuesday as a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 160 mph.

The dead included a man who drowned when his boat capsized, a woman killed when a tree fell on her house and a newborn who died shortly after birth because her mother couldn't get medical attention.

Among the missing were four fishermen whose small sailboat sank as Felix's center passed overhead. A survivor, Fernando Pereira, 24, said he clung to a piece of wood for 12 hours, despite a dislocated shoulder, and washed ashore at the village of Sandy Bay only hours after Felix made landfall there. He hadn't seen his friends since.

"I felt horrible," he said. "I was drinking salt water, and I thought I was going to die."

Others were caught in the sea as well. Jelivaro Climax, 22, said he had to swim through enormous waves to reach shore.

"Lightning flashed through a pitch black sky," he said. "I don't know how I survived. I swam with everything I had, and I was sure the sea would take me."

Felix swept over the Miskito Coast, an impoverished region where about 150,000 people live in jungle settlements. Their hamlets of wooden shacks and coconut groves are remote even in good weather, reachable only by air or flat-bottom boats.

The Miskitos, descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves, live semi-autonomously, much like people on Indian reservations in the United States.

There wasn't enough fuel after the storm for boats to make long trips, and Felix snapped steel cables that guided a small ferry carrying people and cars from Puerto Cabezas to the village of Wawahum.

Johana Aliberto Maquiave, 36, was stuck in Puerto Cabezas, trying to get back to her family in Sandy Bay, the village where the eye of the storm hit.

"I want to know what happened to my three children," she said, fighting tears. "The poor kids stayed with their dad. I am here with nothing. I came on Sunday to buy food."

Felix wiped out crops and damaged most of the 70 tons of food and emergency goods that had been flown in before the storm.

On Wednesday, it was hard to find a building that wasn't damaged. Puerto Cabezas' hospital was filled with water, and doctors attended to the injured at an improvised clinic.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega flew over the area to survey the damage. He said that the United States and Venezuelan offered aid and that Cuban doctors were already on the ground. Nicaragua's military flew in sheets, mattresses, food and first aid materials.

[xzavierbrown]

send in sean penn and his leaky boat to save the day...