Our World

Hurricane Mitch's Damage

After all the talk of Hurricane Mitch during the GIS assignment, I was interested in the actual damage it caused to the areas it hit. The intense winds and devastating floods did infact cause an immense amount of damage to Central America.

First here is a little background of the storm: It sustained winds of 180 mph on October 26 into October 27, 1998. It was the strongest storm in the western Caribbean since Hurricane Gilbert which occurred in 1988. Hurricane Mitch hindered off the coast of Honduras before moving inland. The storm’s heavy rainfall caused horrible floods and mudslides which in itself did a lot of damage to not only the people of the area, but the land as well. After that, the hurricane went into the Gulf of Mexico where it revitalized the system into a tropical storm, which crashed into southern Florida in early November.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/huricane/1998/wmitch.htm

Central America was destroyed by Hurricane Mitch. For damage reports visist http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/1998/wmdamage.htm

Obviously this hurricane caused damage. However, a normal person would only see the damage it caused to the land and it people killed and hurt. It's important to see that the economy suffered too.

posted by Anonymous @ 10/26/2006 07:42:00 PM