NASA's Aqua satellite captured images of Henriette off Baja California, and Felix off the coast of Nicaragua. This composite shows the images collected in two consecutive orbits around the globe. Breaks in coverage between the orbits appear in gray. (Image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC)
LA CEIBA, Honduras - Hurricane Felix roared ashore early Tuesday as a fearsome Category 5 storm � the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms have made landfall in the same season (the other was Dean). The storm hit near the swampy Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians dependent on canoes to make their way to safety.
Felix was the first of two major storms expected to make landfall on Tuesday: Off Mexico's Pacific coast, Hurricane Henriette churned toward the upscale resort of Cabo San Lucas, popular with Hollywood stars and sea fishing enthusiasts. (It's the first time since recordkeeping began in 1949 that Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes made landfall on the same date).
On the Nicaraguan coast, 2,000 people were evacuated before the hurricane blew roofs off homes, blocked roads and knocked out telephone service, said Nicaragua's Civil Defense chief, Rogelio Flores.
But many other Miskito Indians refused to leave low-lying areas and head to shelters set up in schools. The newspaper La Prensa reported that 20 fishermen were missing.
Communication to the area was largely cut off, making it difficult to find out what was happening as the storm's winds began hitting the remote, swampy area, much of it reachable only by canoe...
Indians along the isolated Miskito Coast live in wooden shacks, get around on canoes and subsist on fish, beans, rice, cassava and plantains. The only path to safety is up rivers and across lakes that are too shallow for regular boats, but many lack gasoline for long journeys. Provincial health official Efrain Burgos estimated that 18,000 people must find their own way to higher ground...
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