Hurricane Mitch

Hurricane Mitch was born on the 22^nd of October, 1998 in the Caribbean Sea.  It passed from a tropical storm to a category five hurricane, the highest possible rating.  This meant sustained winds of 155 mph or greater and storm swells of over 5 meters.  Mitch was actually stronger than this with sustained winds of over 180 mph (putting it into a hypothetical category six).  It slid west and then paused off the coast of Honduras, weakening to a category three before it moved south, making landfall on the 29^th.

When it did hit Honduras, it brought waves as high as 20 feet with it, inundating the northern coast.  For the next five days, Mitch stalled above Honduras, flooding the rest of the country with torrential rains.  In the mountains, up to 6.5 feet (FEET) of rain fell in less than a week.  This massive amount ran down the mountains, dislodging the soil in massive landslides, breaking riverbanks and knocking out almost every major bridge in the country (see map below).  It rained in the lowlands too, Choluteca in the south got 1.5 feet in ONE day.  The wind and rain devastated the crops in the field and in storage, destroying 20% of the café, 30% of the vegetables, 60% of the corn, 60% of the sugar cane, and 85% of the banana crops.  The landslides completely erased 25 villages across the country and wiped out 75% of the country’s transportation infrastructure.  The airports were under water.  If they had had sufficient helicopters, they would have been the only way to reach the remote villages.  When it finally moved north off of Honduras, the country was in ruins.  The president said that the last 50 years of progress had been erased.  The IADB called it “an unprecedented disaster”.  

1.5 million people (25% of the population) were homeless, the death toll was climbing towards 10,000, and almost twice that many were missing (and would never be found).  Food and water shortages were acute and malaria, dengue fever, and cholera were starting to appear.  A curfew was imposed by the government fearing rampant crime.  The streets and houses in the capital were literally filled with mud and buried debris. 

There’s little point in comparisons to Katrina.  The entire country was in ruins.  Mitch had rendered even the maps obsolete.

Choluteca Bridge

But, this is one of those instances when people step up.  There was no crime at all.  None of the looting we saw in Katrina or in the aftermath of Chile's earthquake.  People fought infection and no epidemics raged through the country.  Mexico sent 700 tons of food, The US pledged $80 M and offered the services of the US armed forces stationed in Honduras (why they are there, I don’t know) and their helicopters, Spain pledged $100 M, and Sweden promised $200 M over a three year period.  Honduras has been rebuilt.  However, it is hard for me to say how things have changed since 10 years ago.  People don’t record the incremental improvements nearly as well as the sudden disasters.  Not to say that Honduras is a shining example of development now, read my previous posts, it’s not.  And it still faces setbacks from rains and storms.  In 2008, flooding returned and 200,000 were affected.  This past September, rain washed out the main highway between San Pedro and Tegucigalpa.  But things are much better than they could be.

However, what really astounds me is how I didn’t know about this until I came down here.  I was 13 when this happened, in junior high.  Was I not aware that a country was almost literally wiped off the map?  Chalk this up as just another thing that I never knew about, alongside the Iran-Iraq war, the Algerian civil war, and UN Resolution 242. That darn Robert Fisk.