Floods Displace Thousands in Honduras

Thousands of Hondurans from low-lying areas heeded flood warnings and evacuated their homes Friday, just one year after they fled deadly high waters spawned by Hurricane Mitch.

The pace of evacuations increased Friday, a day after authorities ordered people from the cities of La Lima and El Progreso, near the northern industrial capital of San Pedro Sula, to get out of the way of waters being released from the rain-swollen reservoir at the country’s largest hydroelectric dam.

Soldiers, police and other emergency workers were helping with the evacuations. Residents were asked to try to find accommodations with relatives and friends.

On Friday, officials began releasing 1,300 cubic yards of water per second from El Cajon, one of the biggest hydroelectric dams in the world. Normally water is released from the dam at a rate of 38 cubic yards per second. The increased flow was expected to cause surrounding rivers to rise and flood their banks, bringing widespread damage and destruction to the area.

High-water fears also spread to the capital, Tegucigalpa, where, officials said, rivers could flood if another reservoir overflowed.

President Carlos Flores declared a state of emergency last week because of the flooding, which has killed six people and driven more than 4,000 from their homes. Nine bridges and hundreds of homes have been washed away and crops of banana, grain and sugar cane--meant to replace those wiped out by Mitch a year ago--have been lost.

Officials estimated that Mitch killed about 10,000 people in Central America. Seventy percent of Honduras’ crops were wiped out, along with dozens of bridges and highways.

With 40,000 people still homeless from Mitch, the country of 6.3 million will have difficulty finding shelter for new evacuees.

Weather reports called for continued rain over the weekend.

“The outlook is pretty black for Honduras,” Vice President William Handal said.

In neighboring Guatemala, intense rains triggered floods, killed one person and destroyed highways and bridges.

In Zacapa, 80 miles northeast of the Guatemalan capital, swollen rivers wiped out a highway, sweeping away five large tractor trailers.