Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Nov 18, 2020 / 12:33 pm (CNA).- With Hurricane Iota becoming the second major hurricane to hit Central America this November, relief agencies have tried to prepare for even more destruction and have appealed for donations and support from around the world.
“Right now the world’s attention is focused elsewhere,” Conor Walsh, Catholic Relief Services’ manager in Honduras, told CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency ACI Prensa Nov. 16 before Iota made landfall.
“It’s been a little hard to get resources together to be able to respond effectively considering the scale of this emergency, but we’re doing what we can and we’re reaching out to all people of good will.”
“We are fully aware that there are other emergencies the world is dealing with right now. Let us not overlook Central America,” he said. “Let us not forget our brothers and sisters here in Honduras because they are suffering, and they are very very close to the United States. We should extend a helping hand.”
Hurricane Iota briefly reached Category 5 hurricane strength, then made landfall in Nicaragua Monday night with sustained winds of 155 mph, a Category 4 hurricane. It weakened to a Category 2 strength storm, with 105 mph winds, before becoming a tropical storm, National Public Radio reports.
The storm brought “catastrophic winds, life-threatening storm surge, and torrential rainfall,” the National Hurricane Center said. At least four adults and two minors were killed in Nicaragua, which lost electrical power along almost its entire coast. Tens of thousands of people took refuge in government shelters.
At least two people died on the Colombian island of Providencia, where 112 people were evacuated on Tuesday, CNN reports. The infrastructure on the island was completely wiped out. It is the first recorded Category 5 storm to hit the island and its neighbor San Andres.
Iota is the 30th named storm this season, and the strongest storm of the season. It follows soon after the Nov. 4 landfall of Hurricane Eta, which hit Nicaragua, Guatemala, and southern Belize.
“The situation in Honduras is already critical,” Walsh said before Iota’s landfall. “After Eta came through, thousands of people were displaced from their homes in the north. They’re living in shelters now. They’ve lost everything.”
“In more vulnerable rural communities, farmers lost their crops. This was just before they were going to harvest their bean crops and their corn, two basic staples,” said Walsh.
“Iota is expected to be worse. It is going right through the center of the country,” he said. “We’re bracing for the worst.”
Timothy Hansell, manager of Catholic Relief Services in Nicaragua, told National Public Radio that the relief agency aims to provide cleaning supplies and toilet paper to local residents, rebuild homes, and help farmers recover.
Caribbean coastal indigenous communities were among the hardest hit by Eta’s strong winds and floodwaters, he said. Many of their homes were destroyed. Nicaraguan farmers in the northern and central parts of the country lost as much as 50% of their bean crops, with heavy damage to rice, corn and vegetables.
Likewise, the immediate situation in Honduras is “a very, very critical situation,” Walsh said.
Catholic Relief Services is the U.S. bishops’ foreign relief agency. There are about 60 CRS staff based in Nicaragua’s national capital of Tegucigalpa, the city of San Pedro, and La Esperanza in the west of the country. They normally focus on improving agriculture, water supply and education. Aiding youth vulnerable to exploitation and unemployment is another area of their work.
“All of these programs are being interrupted now because of the emergency,” Walsh said. “We’re using whatever funding we can to provide immediate assistance for the families that have been so badly affected.”
There is great need for drinking water, food supplies, and biosafety equipment like masks, antiseptic gel and soap. There are fears that crowding at hurricane shelters will lead to the spread of coronavirus infections.
“People who are in shelters, for the most part, had to leave their homes without anything, much less a mask,” Walsh explained. “The conditions for propagation of COVID are rife in those shelters.”
According to Walsh, Honduras “is suffering the effects of climate change, and it is not responsible for this.”
“It is our duty as human beings to respond to that in a way that recognizes our common humanity,” he said.
Scientists say a changing climate and hotter oceans have contributed to stronger hurricanes. The water in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico is consistently 2 degrees hotter than a century ago, according to National Public Radio.
“Honduras is starting from a very vulnerable point to begin with,” Walsh continued. “Even without the hurricanes, even without COVID, Honduras was teetering on the edge because it’s such a poor country and it’s been so hard hit by climate change.”
The country is suffering an “acute food insecurity situation” with low food supplies after several seasons of drought.
“And add to that COVID. COVID locked down the economy. It closed markets. It made it even harder for people to make a living or an income,” said Walsh. “Now, what little is left, Eta damaged, and hurricane Iota is going to finish off.”
“What is going to be the result? In all likelihood, people who have lost everything are going to feel they have no option but to migrate. It’s going to translate into stronger migration pressures once again,” he added.
Walsh encouraged better ways of thinking about Honduras and its people.
“We have to get past this notion that Honduras is a source of problems or a source of migrants that we don’t want. It’s a neighbor of ours. It’s a place of great suffering, where poverty and exclusion explain why so many choose to leave the country,” he said. “The more that we can help Hondurans in Honduras, the better.”
Catholic Relief Services is accepting donations for hurricane relief through its website, www.crs.org.
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Is Cardinal Collins going to fire his priests, then, who do not comply with this coercion? I pray there is a revolt. The Catholic Church teaches that such medical interventions must be voluntary. It is ironic that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, of which Cardinal Collins is obviously a member, has apologized to our Indigenous people and now pledged 30 million dollars to them for injustices committed against them in residential schools, but at the same time he implements a coercive Covid 19 vaccine mandate for his priests, staff, and volunteers. The fact that these vaccines have safety issues makes this coercion even more ominous. Has he not read anything on this?
Does Cardinal Collins know of the anxiety and suffering of those caused by his coercive mandate and who are being told to put an interim approved vaccine in to their healthy bodies? For many it goes against their conscience.
Cardinal Collin’s response is one of panic. It is a caving into the State (Pontius Pilate)…which is contrary to the Gospel. It is the gospel of fear!
Please, Cardinal Collins and others, see scholarly information on Covid 19 here:
https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org
https://healthprofessionalsunited.ca/open-letter-one/
https://doctorsandscientistsdeclaration.org/
Cardinal Collins seems to care more about the China Flu that ( perhaps) kills the body – but he won’t ( even try to ) stop the child-corrupting curriculum that teaches sodomy as a sacrament in Ontario Catholic Schools. Trading the innocence of little Catholic school children in return for Lucifer’s gold is like Caiphas saying ; “Better that the children be perverted for the sake of government funding”. Cowardice and deliberate cooperation with child corruption is the antithesis of the mission of Christian Education.
Christ gave a very strong warning about the “millstone” regarding the corruption of innocent little ones.
Didn’t Cardinal Collins promise that he
would protect the children ???
Better a child go to a Public School and learn paganism as paganism – than go to a “Catholic” School and learn buggery as a sacrament.
“Silence in the face of evil is evil”.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
excellent comments; it’s too bad you are not the cardinal
Great witness to Christ Fr Duffy.
Does anyone know how Father Duffy is doing and where he is ?
It has been both odd and disturbing to see highly placed Catholic clergy kneel at the altar of secularism, where this disease is concerned. It has been intrusive enough here in the US but both Canada and Australia has taken their mitigation measures to draconian levels. One could easily call them suppressive of religion. We already know about the anti-catholic sentiment in Australia thanks to the official government rail-roading of Cardinal Pell. They also now have “camps” for the forceable detention of those who test covid positive, as well as tracking devices placed on phones which use face recognition technology to “check up” on people who test positive, to ensure they remain locked at home. Failure to match the required metrics result in the arrival of police at your home. Canada now has been taking to arresting and jailing Protestant Ministers who have the temerity to hold services, now two years into the pandemic.If suppression of religion was their primary aim, this could not be more damaging to the church. Are they really this afraid of a virus which has hardly any death rate? Are people falling over dead in the streets? I have often thought of Canadians as an anemic version of Americans, sans the weapons and spine to use them.Their current mode of operation in these former Brit possessions does not change my opinion, and gives a sadly clear picture of people willing to sacrifice their civil rights for hardly any sane reason. How long is a nation suppose to pander to irrational fear, and compromise quality of life and religious freedom, for a virus which will in all likelihood NEVER be eradicated totally? When does a govt official with gumption voice that reality out loud and allow people to get on with living?? The larger question is WHY are church officials continuing to cooperate with this obvious repression? Using the excuse of “concern for the health of others” is not sufficient.Not at this point, two years out. Not given the low death rate and not given how long we have lived under virtual martial law as applied by leftists.It would be nice to see some leadership shown in the church, some officials with the sheer strength of will to say what is necessary to save what is left of the church. I understand the Bishop of Quebec cancelled Christmas Mass last week. That is disgusting, and a disgrace. How long will this go on? Five years, ten? Will it still be ok to cancel church then? Evidently our US covid death rate over TWO years has been about 800,000. That is 400,000 per year. While in contrast, according to the CDC, our annual CANCER death rate is 600,000. Many of those deaths are also preventable. Why are we not hysterical about that? Its time to tell the media to stop the hysterical reporting of active covid cases, the vast majority of which do not end in death. Its time for Catholic clergy to go back to celebrating Mass as we did before, with servers, and singing. For that we need some cardinals and Bishops with a spine and a devotion to God, as opposed to the state.
Sadly I only saw this now…how terrible to watch the highest prelates in our Church fall on their sword…the sword of the apostles …that is the defense of Christ’s Church and His children…and the men ordained to serve the Church…
How shocking that the Cardinal is enforcing such an anti christian method…..reminds me of the Protestant Reformation when almost every Bishop bar a few bowed to the murderous evil man.
King Henry…and thousands of my people were killed,raped by the english soldiers,lands repossesed….
I wonder were these bishops are now..
The Cardinal obviously does not pay attention to true and honest medical science…..and thats dangerous.
Covid 19 was man made in a bioweapon wuha lab…it was designed to mame and kill..
We know this.
Who i wonder was its first target? The following were, are :
The western armies…
The Church
The western govts
and then just regular people..
Who according to the CCP have to be controlled or just killed if they are elderly or disabled.
Is there plan working ..
Who is assisting them? All the above.
The Cardinal should spend some time listening to honest drs and scientists like the mnra inventor Dr Malone and many others
..