Former Hurricane Julia has passed, but it is still dumping torrential rains on Guatemala and El Salvador on Monday after reemerging in the Pacific after pounding Nicaragua.
As a direct or indirect impact of the storm, at least 28 deaths have been documented.
Five people were buried after a hillside in the province of Alta Verapaz collapsed on top of their home, according to Guatemala’s disaster prevention agency. Nine individuals passed away in the province of Huehuetenango, close to Mexico, including a soldier who was murdered while doing rescue operations.
Authorities in El Salvador said that five soldiers from the Salvadoran army died when a wall at a home where they took sanctuary fell in Comasagua, where hundreds of police and soldiers were conducting anti-gang raids. There was harm to another soldier.
Guatajiagua, a village in eastern El Salvador, lost another two residents when a wall of their house collapsed due to heavy rainfall. In El Salvador, two more men lost their lives: one when a tree fell on him, the other when he was washed away by a torrent.
El Salvador issued a state of emergency and opened 80 storm shelters as a result of rivers overflowing their banks.
Three individuals perished when their boat swamped or sank in northern Honduras, while a 22-year-old woman died when she was carried away by currents in adjacent Honduras. A fallen tree caused the death of a guy in Nicaragua.
Julia hit the coast early Sunday on Nicaragua’s central Caribbean coast as a hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph) and survived the country’s mountainous terrain before entering the Pacific late in the day as a tropical storm.
Julia had moved inland over Guatemala by Monday, and its winds had slowed to 30 mph (45 kph).
Julia was centered about 80 miles (125 kilometers) west-northwest of Guatemala City and moving west-northwest at 15 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in the United States (24 kph).
The storm is anticipated to dump as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain in some isolated regions, according to the center, and floods and mudslides are possible over Central America and southern Mexico through Tuesday.
Around 1,300 people had to evacuate their houses in Guatemala because of floods and raging streams, while two individuals were reported missing and two were hospitalized.
Later on Monday, as Julia traveled down the Guatemalan coast, it was expected to fade.
According to a report published on Sunday by Colombia’s national disaster office, Julia nearly ripped off the roofs of several homes and uprooted trees when it passed San Andres Island, which is located east of Nicaragua. There were no reports of fatalities as of yet.
9,500 people had been evacuated to shelters in Nicaragua, according to vice president Rosario Murillo, who spoke to TN8 television.
Additionally, Panama, Honduras, and Costa Rica experienced heavy rains and evacuations, and parts of their roadways were shut down as a result.
