Hurricane Felix death toll rises

Aid has begun to arrive from nearby countries

At least 98 people have been killed and thousands left homeless after Hurricane Felix lashed Nicaragua and Honduras earlier this week, officials say.

Dozens of people are still missing and rescuers are trawling jungles, open seas and beaches for more survivors.

Both countries remain on alert for heavy floods in the storm’s aftermath.

Officials are only now uncovering the scale of devastation caused by Felix, which hit land as a maximum strength category five storm on Tuesday.

“It is worse than we previously thought,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said as he met officials.

“Many families stayed in their homes. There are many victims, many dead.”

Nicaragua bore the brunt of the hurricane, with winds of up 256km/h (160mph). Neighbouring Honduras was hit mainly by flooding.

Aid agencies are struggling to reach the worst-affected area, around the Nicaraguan town of Puerto Cabezas. In one case, soldiers distributed food to a remote village where residents had been surviving on nothing but coconuts.

Nicaragua map

Animated guide: Hurricanes

Villagers in the remote north-eastern region, which is largely autonomous from the Managua government, complained that officials had not given them enough warning of the hurricane.

Lucia Parista Mora, 43, told the Associated Press news agency that many people were out in fishing boats when the storm hit, unaware of what was in store.

She feared many more bodies would be found in the ocean.

“We want them to bring them back here, even if it is just bones,” she said.

Emergency aid

Miskito Indians, who make a living from lobster fishing and agriculture, make up most of the area’s population.

Many of the victims were reportedly travelling by boat when they were hit by giant waves, while others appeared to have been sucked into the sea from their houses on the coast.

Rescuers have found bodies floating on the debris-strewn sea, while other bodies have been washed up on beaches.

Emergency aid has been flown into Puerto Cabezas - mainly from other Central American countries - but food and fuel remain scarce.

The UN’s World Food Programme has sent nearly five tons of food aid, with supplies also arriving from as far away as Japan.

Correspondents say the storm has revived memories throughout Central America of Hurricane Mitch, which killed some 10,000 people in 1998.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Henriette on Thursday dumped rain on the US states on Arizona and New Mexico, before dissipating.

Henriette - then at hurricane strength - hit Mexico’s western Sonora state with winds of up to 120km/h (75mph), a day after lashing Baja California.

It has left nine people dead in Mexico, with a further 5,000 people still being housed in shelters as more flood warnings are put in place.

Dean drenches Mexico’s eastern mainland

The Category 2 hurricane reaches into the Gulf of Mexico with less force and is expected to dissipate as it moves further inland.

MEXICO CITY — A weakened Hurricane Dean passed west from the Yucatan peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico, reaching land about 10 a.m. today in Tecolutla, on Mexico’s eastern mainland, about halfway between Tampico and the port of Veracruz.

Coastal residents were bracing for heavy rains and possible flooding from the storm.

An estimated 20,000 people have been evacuated from coastal cities stretching north from the port city of Veracruz to Tampico, officials said today.

The Category 2 hurricane is expected to move inland and dissipate, but first it could bring as much as 20 inches of rain to the states of Veracruz, Puebla and Hidalgo.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon today toured damaged regions on the Yucatan, which included thousands of acres of corn, sugar and citrus farmland.

On Tuesday, Hurricane Dean, packing 165-mph winds as a Category 5 storm, made landfall on the Yucatan near the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, causing widespread destruction but relatively few injuries.

No deaths had been reported, despite the fierce winds that caused heavy damage to more than one-third of the buildings in some seaside communities.

“They’ve made an effort here to spread the idea of being prepared,” said Abel Posadas, part of a team of Red Cross workers who had driven 1,000 miles from Mexico City to Felipe Carrillo Puerto in the days before the hurricane struck.

“Everyone just stays calm and gets ready.”

About 1,500 families saw their homes destroyed or heavily damaged in Quintana Roo state, which includes Felipe Carrillo Puerto and resorts such as Cancun, officials said.

Many of those rendered homeless are the state’s poorest residents, including hundreds of Maya Indians.

Humberto Sosa, 35, a Maya-speaking resident of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, was one of those who lost his home. Like many in the region, it was a flimsy structure of cardboard and tin sheets.

“When those tin sheets start flying, they’re really dangerous because they’re sharp,” he said. “You have to get away.” He escaped injury by seeking refuge in a city shelter.

In Tulum, about 60 miles north of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, officials evacuated a 10-mile stretch of beach outside the city, where hotels and bungalows face pristine white sands and the turquoise Caribbean.

A third of the buildings along the beach sustained heavy damage, officials said.

Tulum emergency coordinator Lucio Salvador Arguea credited the government’s year-round education efforts, which include PowerPoint presentations on “storm surges” at local schools.

“People here know that when the army and the municipal government comes and tells them to leave, they have to go,” he said.

The eye of the storm passed through sparsely populated nature reserves and jungles between Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Chetumal, a stroke of good fortune that some attributed to an act of God and nature.

“There was a cold front off Cuba,” said Montalvo Rodriguez. “At the last minute, it pushed the eye away from us, and away from Chetumal.”

Fallen trees littered the 90-mile road that links Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto. But the mangrove swamps and tropical forests that cover much of the region acted like a huge pillow that absorbed Dean’s punch.

Chetumal, the capital of Quintana Roo state and home to 147,000 people, was the city hardest hit by the storm. There was extensive flooding in the city center.

Hundreds of trees and light poles were felled in the city, an official said. But otherwise, the infrastructure appeared to have suffered no serious damage.

U.S. forecasters said Hurricane Dean was the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall since record-keeping began in the mid-19th century.

The only recorded storms that were stronger when they hit land were a 1935 Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys, and Hurricane Gilbert, which hit Cancun in 1988.

Hurricane Dean Reaches Mexico’s Coast

Streets were flooded today in Chetumal, Mexico.

The hurricane struck the Yucatán Peninsula today at Category 5 level, but within a few hours as it moved westward across land its force diminished to a Category 3.

MTV, RealNetworks Join to Battle iTunes

In a bid to create a stronger competitor to Apple Inc.’s market-dominating iTunes Store, Viacom Inc.’s MTV Networks is set to announce today that it is merging its online digital-music offerings into a joint venture with RealNetworks Inc., the company behind the Rhapsody subscription digital-music service, according to people familiar with the matter.

Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, has signed on to supply mobile distribution for the joint venture’s content, according to a person familiar with the matter. That could provide additional leverage against Apple, which angered many mobile carriers and consumers with the decision to make its iPhone compatible only with AT&T Inc.

The move appears to spell the end of MTV’s Urge digital service, launched in partnership with Microsoft Corp. last year. Microsoft has been heavily focused on its own Zune service in recent months, to the apparent detriment of Urge, which had few subscribers. MTV itself no longer invested significant resources in Urge after Zune’s debut, according to a person familiar with Urge.

Teaming up with MTV could give Rhapsody a broader reach, thanks to the music channel’s strong marketing and vast reach in cable television and other media. MTV plans to promote the service heavily on its television channels. A person familiar with the matter said MTV and Seattle-based RealNetworks have been discussing a partnership for months and were eager to complete a deal before MTV’s Video Music Awards ceremony on Sept. 9, during which they hope to promote the partnership.

Spokesmen for MTV and RealNetworks declined to comment.

The pairing is the latest effort by RealNetworks to raise the profile of Rhapsody, a service for which it charges users a monthly fee starting at $12.99 to listen to an unlimited number of songs.

A person familiar with the matter said the venture is to be headed by Michael Bloom, who currently heads Urge for MTV Networks. MTV is to contribute editorial content, including music blogs. Mika Salmi, the president of MTV Networks’ global digital media, is a former RealNetworks executive.

MTV has been investing heavily in digital technology, including plans announced last week to invest at least $500 million in games, on top of acquisitions like that of Harmonix Music Systems Inc., the developer of the Guitar Hero game series.

Mexico abandons oil rigs ahead of Dean

TULUM, Mexico - Hurricane Dean headed for a collision course with Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Monday, forcing the state-run oil company to abandon its off-shore rigs, and sending tourists fleeing for the airports and locals searching for higher ground. The storm killed 10 people as it crossed the Caribbean.

Dean was already a powerful Category 4 storm as it raked the Cayman Islands. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it could grow into a monstrous Category 5 hurricane before slashing across the Yucatan Peninsula and emerging in the oil-rich Gulf of Campeche.

Mexico’s state oil company decided Monday to evacuate all 14,000 workers and shut down production on the offshore rigs that extract most of the nation’s oil.

While the storm’s center was expected to strike central Mexico, the outer bands of the storm were likely to bring rain and gusty winds to south Texas — already saturated after an unusually rainy summer. Texas officials were taking no changes — emergency operations centers opened, prison inmates were moved inland, and sandbags distributed.

The Mexican resort city of Cancun began evacuations and arranged for extra flights to help tens of thousands of tourists leave before Dean’s arrival. The hotel zone was quiet on Monday, nearly all guests gone.

Florida Volynskaya, 24, of Baltimore, arrived at Cancun’s airport Sunday planning to spend the night on the floor in hopes of getting a flight out.

“We just wanted to get out anywhere,” said Volynskaya. “We really didn’t want to be in a shelter.”

Though forecasts had shifted the projected track to the south, Cancun still could face tropical-storm-force winds — forecast to extend over an area of about 75,000 square miles, about the size of South Dakota — and local fishermen were taking precautions.

“We’re leaving. You don’t play around with nature,” Maclovio Manuel Kanul said as he pulled equipment out of his beachfront fishing shack near Cancun.

“We still haven’t been able to recover from Wilma, and now this is coming.”

Hurricane Wilma ravaged Cancun in 2005, filling hotel lobbies with shattered metal, marble, glass and muck, and reducing beaches to thin strips. The storm caused $3 billion in damage, the largest insured losses in Mexican history.

Dean — the first hurricane of the Atlantic season — bore down late Sunday on the Cayman Islands after battering Jamaica, but the vulnerable British territory said Monday it had been “spared the brunt of Hurricane Dean.”

In one Cayman shelter — the gymnasium of John Gray High School — about 100 people gathered around radios Sunday night, listening to the latest news about the hurricane.

“Whichever God you believe in, now is the time to bow your head and pray to him,” said Zemrie Thompson, the shelter coordinator. Those in the gym bowed their heads.

Dean’s eye passed some 100 miles south of the Cayman Islands, which were spared the hurricane-force winds extending up to 60 miles from the center.

Early Monday, Dean had maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, up from 145 mph Sunday, and could dump up to 20 inches of rain. Even if the hurricane continues a steady westward course toward Mexico, parts of Texas could be flooded by the storm’s outer bands.

“Our mission is very simple. It’s to get people out of the kill zone, to get people out of the danger area, which is the coastline of Texas,” said Johnny Cavazos, chief emergency director of Cameron County, at Texas’ southern tip.

Jamaica avoided the direct hit when the storm wound up passing to the south Sunday night. The storm collapsed building, uprooted trees, flooded roads and tore the roofs off many homes, businesses and a prison block. No prisoners escaped.

Police said officers got into a shootout with looters at a shopping center in the central Jamaican parish of Clarendon, but nobody was hurt. Curfews were in effect until Monday evening. Authorities also cut power on the island to prevent damage to the power grid.

The government set up more than 1,000 shelters in converted schools, churches and the indoor national sports arena, but only 47 were occupied as the storm moved in, said Cecil Bailey of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management.

As of 2 p.m. EDT Monday, Dean was centered about 330 miles southwest of Grand Cayman.

George Lee, mayor of the Portmore community near the Jamaican capital Kingston, said appeals to evacuate went unheeded. Some islanders said they were afraid for their belongings if they moved to shelters.

“Too much crime in Kingston. I’m not leaving my home,” Paul Lyn said in Port Royal, east of Kingston.

Many tourists who did not get flights out took shelter at places like Sandals Whitehouse, a resort that has buildings capable of withstanding a powerful storm.

Trinice Tyler, a postal worker from Lake Elsinore, Calif., said she would weather the storm there “on my knees praying.”

“I’m celebrating my 40th birthday today, and it’s going to be a birthday to remember,” she said.

The National Hurricane Center said Dean was projected to have sustained winds of 160 mph before plowing into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula on Tuesday. The Mexican mainland or Texas could be hit later.

There was also a hurricane warning in effect for Belize’s coast.