Ex-Hurricane Skirts Central America’s Pacific Coast : Guatemala, El Salvador on Storm Alert

Guatemala and El Salvador were under states of alert Monday as Tropical Storm Miriam whirled offshore, and other Latin American countries devastated by the storm worked to aid victims.

Hurricane Joan left at least 98 people dead in five countries during the past week and plowed across Nicaragua from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean before it was downgraded to a tropical storm and renamed Miriam.

The storm buffeted El Salvador with torrential rains and strong winds but left little damage compared to the devastation caused in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Evacuation of people from low-lying coastal areas began Sunday and continued Monday.

Ports were closed along Guatemala’s Pacific coast, and forecasters warned of expected heavy rains, tides three to four feet above normal, flash floods and mudslides.

Experts had feared the storm would regain strength and become a hurricane again as it reached the Pacific, but they said Monday that it was clinging too close to the coast to gather force.

The known death toll from the weeklong storm was 50 people in Nicaragua, 18 in Costa Rica, four in Panama and 26 in Colombia and Venezuela. The storm affected all Central American countries except Belize.

Late Monday, Miriam’s center was reported about 150 miles west-southwest of Guatemala City, moving west-northwest at 10 m.p.h with sustained winds of 55 m.p.h.

Nicaragua suffered the most from Hurricane Joan as it smashed into Caribbean coast and blew overland across the narrow Central American isthmus to the Pacific.

Bluefields, a Nicaraguan port city on the Caribbean with a population of 38,000, was in tatters with at least 6,000 homes destroyed and few buildings still with roofs.

Much of Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, remained without electric power or drinking water Monday, and the government ordered schools to remain closed. It said schoolchildren should join in the reconstruction work.

In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater charged that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was using the storm tragedy as propaganda against the Reagan Administration’s support of Contras fighting the Sandinista government.

Fitzwater said no request for U.S. aid had been received from the Nicaraguan government and none was expected.

Nicaragua appealed for international aid, but Ortega, asked if the United States should help, said, “The best humanitarian aid the United States could give us would be to stop its terrorist policies against Nicaragua.”