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Hurricane Beta makes landfall in Nicaragua

Monday, October 31, 2005

Hurricane Beta hit the Nicaraguan coast early on Saturday, sending powerful rain and winds their way.

Although it lost some speed during landfall, Beta was still a Category 2 hurricane, with winds of up to 110 Mph (175 kph) and was expected to dump up to 15 inches of rain. Residents from the local coastal fishing villages rushed into flimsy makeshift shelters as the hurricane approached.

"We had a very bad night. The water leaked in, the children were cold. They brought us here without telling us anything. We don't have food or water," Norma Smith, a mother of six, said on Sunday morning.

Neighboring Honduras declared a national emergency, and planned to evacuate 125,000 people. However, residents in the isolated coastal regions are usually wary of outsiders, and many failed to heed the warnings.

"These people do not believe in danger until they really feel it," said Col. Mario Perez-Cassar, the head of Nicaragua's civil defense.

Emergency officials say there have been no deaths so far, but the projected path of Beta takes it straight across Nicaragua, raising the possibility of lethal mudslides in mountainous areas.

Beta, which was not expected to hit the United States, was the 23rd hurricane this year, more than any Atlantic season on record. This season has also seen more storms than at any point since record-keeping began in 1851. The previous record of 21 was set in 1933.

Last week Tropical Storm Alpha formed, the first time a letter from the Greek alphabet has been used because the list of storm names was exhausted.

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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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