Honduras

   Hello, my fellow bloggers once again! As you know, I was just in Alaska enjoying my business trip and it was great! I was recently watching the news Saturday in Anchorage, when I saw that Honduras had a terrible hurricane last week. My church's missionary team is leaving to help. My family and close friends, you know that these things way heavy on my heart...so in a couple of days I will also be leaving Alaska and arriving in Trujillo, Honduras.       ______________________________________________________

It is now November, 24th, 2 weeks after the hurricane...hurricane Mitch. I have left Anchorage and have finally arrived in Trujillo, Honduras after several connecting flights. The sights are tragic and everyone is suffering from the damage, loss and results from the storm. After the hurricane, a huge storm surge hit the country. The wave was massive and flooded the lower parts of the country.

Over 9,000 people in all died in the hurricane and 5,677 of those people were of Honduras. On top of all of that... an average of 8,000 people went missing during the hurricane. I was wading down one of the watery streets and a majority of the people I passed didn't even look up. They didn't even notice that the storm was over. Others cried and were stranded in thought over those they lost. Others were grateful for their lives and for the lives of those they loved that they still had.

After the hurricane hit, sickness started to appear and spread. Malaria, Cholera, Dengue and Leptospirosis. They were terrible diseases. People everywhere were coughing and throwing up. Luckily, after medical help, only one death occurred from Leptospirosis out of all the cases and all the diseases.

 When the hurricane hit the border of Honduras and Managua, it traveled at 4 knots making it last for about a week. This also resulted in over 35 inches of rain, flashfloods and mudslides. The flooding in some parts were so bad that some people had not received help or been rescued until 11 late days after the storm. All of the flooding and mudslides were also a variable in the 5,677 deaths. They also damaged/destroyed 70,000 homes and 92 bridges.

Honduras also had a 50% loss of their agricultural crops which were worth thousands of dollars in money to provide for workers and their families. There was $4 million dollars worth of damage to everyone's property, homes and businesses.

According to some of the weather experts on scene, also helping out, Hurricane Mitch happens to be the 2nd worst storm to ever occur in the Atlantic. It was a category 5 hurricane (staying category 5) lasting 33 hours straight. Its wind was 155 knots which hurricane Mitch maintained for 15 hours straight. The third worst in the world. Because this country is a third world country, it will take almost 20 years for the people of Honduras to recover and get back to the place they were.


After helping out after that hurricane, I finally realized how much pain someone could feel over a natural disaster. I always thought of it as a cool weather pattern that just destroyed houses. But no... this hurricane didn't just destroy houses and businesses... it destroyed people's homes, pulled apart families and killed many people.


Hurricane Mitch.

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Resources:

http://www.who.int/csr/don/1998_11_26/en/index.html

http://hurricaneville.com/central_america.html

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1998mitch.html

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/mitch/mitch.html

http://www.who.int/csr/don/1998_12_02/en/index.html

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/leptospirosis

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dengue

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11875801

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Picture Resources:

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/usa/alaska/

http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/country/honduras.html

http://proxied.changemakers.net/journal/300510/displaydis.cfm-ID=29


http://www.dosomething.org/actnow/tipsandtools/terms-you-should-know-about-malaria

http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html

http://forest.mtu.edu/pcforestry/people/1996/brower.html

http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html