Hurricane Felix Leaves at Least 98 Dead
PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua — American, Honduran, and Nicaraguan soldiers searched remote jungle beaches and the open sea yesterday looking for survivors and the dead from Hurricane Felix's rampage.
Esteban Felix / AP
A youth covered with plastic waits to be evacuated from an area in northern Honduras on Wednesday.
Villagers in canoes helped, paddling through waters thick with fallen trees.
Days after the storm hit, more dead were found, raising the known toll to 98, many of them Miskito Indians who had tried to flee the Category 5 hurricane.
Officials believed more dead would be found by teams combing the coast stretching across the Nicaragua-Honduras border.
At least 32 people were still missing after their village was destroyed, and the boats they fled in capsized. Many of the 52 survivors who washed ashore or were found clinging to debris were being treated for dehydration in the seaside Honduran village of Villeda Morales.
Rescue and aid was arriving slowly in the impoverished region, where descendants of Indians, European settlers, and African slaves live in stilt homes on island reefs and in small hamlets, surviving by fishing and diving for lobster.
Interviewed by phone from the area, Honduran Colonel Saul Orlando Coca told the Associated Press that 25 bodies were found yesterday.
Earlier, Nicaraguan and Honduran officials had put the death toll at 40, almost all along the Miskito Coast.
The colonel said American and Honduran military personnel were patrolling the sea and inlets with helicopters and boats while soldiers walked the shore on foot.
