Flattened by hurricane, Mosquito Coast faces hunger

Destruction of rainforest heralds long-term misery for impoverished villagers

Rory Carroll in Li-Dakura, Nicaragua
The Guardian UK


A man stands outside his ruined house in Sahsa. Photograph: Susan Schulman

It is no longer a rainforest but a tree cemetery. As far as the eye can see there are uprooted, bare and broken trunks. The canopy, a roof of foliage so lush you could walk over it, is gone. The few remaining bits of green are no bigger than broccoli.

This is the aftermath of Hurricane Felix along Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. A smell of decay shrouds the landscape. Crops and livestock have vanished into swamps. So much earth and debris have washed into rivers that they resemble caramel sludge.

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Downriver the destruction worsens. Houses built on stilts lean drunkenly and have gaping holes. Many have missing roofs and walls. When you reach the ocean you see they have been spun into the air, Wizard of Oz-style, before smashing and splintering.

Three weeks ago the world watched the hurricane howl towards central America and braced for the worst. It was category five, a monster storm, and a cataclysm seemed inevitable.

But the hurricane changed course and missed big population centres. Instead of cities and tourist resorts it hit this remote wilderness, home to a few fishing and farming communities. A few dozen casualties were reported. The story seemed to be over. The world's gaze shifted elsewhere.

A tour through the affected region last week however showed that for Miskito Indians, one of the most impoverished and isolated communities in the Americas, the story is just beginning. Up to 160,000 people are facing an ecological and humanitarian crisis - and it is getting worse.

"It's very possible the aftermath will kill more than the hurricane itself," said Heriberto Cespedes, a surgeon at the main hospital in Puerto Cabezas. "I think in one or two weeks the avalanche of sickness will begin."

The residents of hundreds of shattered villages are at risk from hunger, exposure, contaminated water and disease spread by rats and mosquitoes, according to relief agencies. Infants have started succumbing to malaria, dengue and diarrhoea.

The longer term fear is that the destruction of the forests - 1.5m hectares (nearly 6,000 square miles) were shredded, including conservation areas - will pollute the water supply and damage the region's economy and ecology for generations. "The few trees that are standing don't even have leaves or branches," said Jaime Guillen, of the Rainforest Alliance, an advocacy group. "The forests are the principal livelihood of the indigenous communities. This environmental disaster risks turning into permanent damage."

Of all the figures prompted by Felix - more than 100 confirmed dead, more than 80% of homes destroyed or damaged, more than 15 years for forests to recover, a UN emergency appeal for nearly $40m - the most striking is the speed of the winds, 160mph. Previous hurricanes wrought devastation through rains, floods and landslides but in the case of Felix it was mainly the extraordinary force of the wind. It churned the Atlantic into a maelstrom that engulfed unprepared coastal communities.

The wind and waves came so fast that about 80 lobster fishermen from Li-Dakura and nearby villages had no time to make for land. Some clung to cayos, flimsy shacks on stilts in the sea, others lashed skiffs together. Neither strategy worked. The cayos and skiffs were obliterated. At least 30 drowned, with bodies washing as far north as Honduras. The survivors clung to debris for two days before being rescued.

"I'm scared to go back out," said Anpinio Adams, 32, gazing out to sea from an uprooted tree trunk. "But there's nothing else for us here, just lobsters."

In fact for the next few months there is not even that. The sea is so contaminated, not least by human remains, that there is a moratorium on lobster fishing.

Nicaragua's Sandinista government, backed by aid from the US, Cuba and Venezuela, among others, has mounted an energetic but at times uncoordinated relief effort. Suspicion of official corruption and mismanagement has prompted some ordinary Nicaraguans to buy aid and deliver it themselves to the coast.

Li-Dakura had received some water and food from the government but no materials to improvise shelters. "This hurricane has hit me up bad, I can't do anything," said Rodney Badin, 75, a barefoot, haunted figure in the shell of his home. He lost two sons, two daughters and a grandson to the storm. His most immediate needs were food, clothes and a blanket. "Something to wrap me up."

As it surged inland Felix weakened to category three but even then it retained enough force to topple mahogany and other hardwood trees and exposed their pale Medusa-like roots.

From the air the landscape resembles a vast, chaotic lumber yard. The tangled wreckage of one forest was so dense that villagers in Sahsa could not even search for missing relatives who had been panning for gold. "There's no way in, we can't reach them," said Bernaldo Lopez, 50, a distraught farmer.

If enough seeds and tools were supplied the maize and manioc crops which had been wiped out could be replanted within six months, said Dr Gerardo Antonio Gutiérrez, of Acción Medica Cristiana. "But the forests are like deserts. They could take one or two generations to recover." The region still bore scars from 1988's Hurricane Joan, he added.

Trees crushed houses and the region's basic infrastructure but experts warn that the more serious damage could come from rotting, putrid vegetation seeping into the water table.

"The trees are sacred to us," said Edith Morales, a relief coordinator. "And now they're dead. And making things worse." She shook her head. "We never imagined this."