Rescuers scooped bodies from the open sea and villagers paddled canoes through fallen trees looking for survivors on this remote, swampy stretch of Caribbean coast as the death toll from Hurricane Felix rose to 98.
Residents of Puerto Cabezas said they had little warning of Felix's rapid approach and when the storm hit most of the men were out to sea fishing. The women and children left behind clambered on the few remaining boats which quickly sank because they were overloaded.
The government "didn't warn us that the hurricane was coming," said Anali Martinez, 21, whose cousin was among the missing. "That's why so many were caught in it fishing."
PHOTO: AP
In Puerto Cabezas, about 500 people crowded onto a pier overlooking the beach where 13 bloated bodies had been laid out on black tarps after being pulled out of the sea. Some tried to rush down a small wooden stairway onto the beach but were held back by police.
Lucia Parista Mora, 43, whose nephew was lobster fishing when the hurricane hit, said that several hundred fishermen and women fish sellers were either on the three main cayes off Puerto Cabezas or in boats fishing when the hurricane arrived on Tuesday. They fear many more bodies will be found in the ocean.
"We want them to bring them back here," said Parista Mora. "Even if it is just bones, we want to see them."
The impoverished region is inhabited by descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves who live in stilt homes and in small hamlets, surviving by fishing and lobster-diving.
Felix developed very quickly over the warm waters of the southern Caribbean, and Nicaragua posted a hurricane warning less than 24 hours before it hit the coast, scrambling to notify the autonomous northeast where many people have a long-standing mistrust of the Nicaraguan government.
Few realized the storm would grow to a Category 5 hurricane so quickly, and some who were warned did not believe it would be so dangerous. But in Nicaragua it completely destroyed 7,995 houses.
Abelino Cox, the spokesman for the Regional Emergency Committee, said late on Thursday that the death toll rose by 33 to 98 as authorities searched the Miskito coastline.
He added that rescue brigades found the ethnic Zumo and Mayagna Indian community of Awastingni, located in the jungle 90km northwest of Puerto Cabezas, completely destroyed and that 14 were missing.
Major Abel Zepeda, deputy chief of Civil Defense in Nicaragua's northern autonomous region, said the death toll had increased to 96, including 44 Indian fishermen from the Miskito Caye, a tiny island off the Nicaraguan coast.
Television images showed the Miskito Cayes totally destroyed. All that remained were the trunks of trees that once supported more than 100 primitive dwellings.
Sara Isolina Alvarado, who was rescued by the army, said authorities in Puerto Cabeza warned residents too late.
"We have no food, water, clothing, nothing. And we're cold," she said.
Aid was arriving slowly and those who survived lacked food and fresh water. A photographer reached one isolated village where the only thing to drink was the water in fallen coconuts.
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