Tropical storm Otto kills nine in Costa Rica

Hurricane Otto made landfall as a unsafe Category 2 hurricane on a sparsely populated stretch of Caribbean coast in Nicaragua Thursday, becoming the southernmost hurricane on record to hit Central America. A powerful hurricane churned toward Nicaragua and Costa Rica with freight-train winds and heavy rains expected to trigger unsafe floods and mudslides. Civil defense officials in Panama say the country has already seen three deaths blamed on late-season Tropical Storm Otto.

Otto was moving west at 9 mph (14 kph), the NHC said, and was expected to plow into the coast somewhere close to the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border in the next few hours.

Both Nicaragua and Costa Rica closed schools, mobilised emergency crews and issued red alerts for areas across much of their territories for the hurricane. The observatory’s initial report said the epicenter was 158 kilometers southeast of Puerto El Triunfo on El Salvador’s Pacific coast.

Agents GAC reported that selected terminals, including Cristobal and Manzanillo International, had also suspended operations due to the coming storm.

Tropical Storm Otto was expected to continue to move away from Central America and eventually weaken.

The Central Valley and south Limon were the only areas spared by Otto, where light to moderate rain in some areas was about the worst of the day.

In a freakish coincidence, soon after Otto landed on Thursday, a magnitude 7 natural disaster struck about 149km southwest of Puerto Triunfo, El Salvador.

“The wind is very strong and it’s raining a lot”, a local resident, Aldrick Beckford, told a foreign media agency by telephone.

The natural disaster was felt from Managua, Nicaragua to San Jose, Costa Rica.

In Cardenas, a municipality of some 5,390 inhabitants located 100 miles (162 kilometers) south of Managua along Lake Nicaragua, hundreds of people remain sheltered in churches, schools and sports courts that were fitted for that goal as Hurricane Otto approached.

It headed toward the Pacific ocean early on Friday after dumping rain on Costa Rica and Nicaragua and sparking emergency measures across a region that was also hit by a 7-magnitude natural disaster.

Neighbouring Costa Rica, which had been fearing its first direct hit from a hurricane since records began in 1851, also showed little damage.

Otto is described as the strongest Atlantic hurricane to occur this late in the season since 1934, according to the Weather Channel.