Hurricane Otto: Deaths as storm hits Costa Rica

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38103330

Hurricane Otto: Deaths as storm hits Costa Rica

26 minutes ago

From the section Latin America & Caribbean

A number of people are dead or missing in Costa Rica after Hurricane Otto made landfall as a Category Two storm. Otto, the southernmost hurricane on record to hit Central America, struck a sparsely-populated area of southern Nicaragua on Thursday.

Neighbouring Costa Rica had ordered 4,000 people from the Caribbean coast.

At about the same time the storm hit, a powerful earthquake shook Nicaragua and El Salvador, briefly triggering a tsunami alert. The 7.0 magnitude quake in the Pacific Ocean was about 120km (75 miles) off the coast of El Salvador. There were no reports of damage or casualties but residents were initially advised to evacuate coastal areas. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center later said the threat had passed. Media in Nicaragua said one woman died of a heart attack after hearing the tsunami warning.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, president Luis Guillermo Solis said an unknown number were dead or missing after the hurricane. The country had not been directly hit by a hurricane since records began in 1851.
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