Hurricane Richard bears down on Belize

The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said the category one hurricane was packing maximum sustained winds near 140 kilometres per hour with higher gusts as it moved in a northwesterly direction over the Caribbean.

At 1800 GMT,Richard was 85 kilometres east of Belize City,and forecasts showed it on a track to sweep across the country and through the Yucatan peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday.

Hurricane warnings were up from Honduras’ Caribbean coast to the east coast of the Yucatan. Tropical storm conditions also were possible in Guatemala.

“A storm surge will raise water levels by as much as three to five feet above normal tide levels near and to the north of where the centre crosses the coast in Belize,” the hurricane center said,adding that surges would be accompanied by “large and destructive waves.”

It predicted three to six inches of rain over Honduras’ Bay Islands,Belize and the southern Yucatan peninsula,as well as heavy rains over northern Honduras.

“These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides especially in mountainous terrains,” the centre warned.

Mudslides and floods have already killed more than 300 people in Central America this year,and left thousands more homeless in an unusually fierce storm season for the region.

Honduran officials said 151 people were evacuated as a precaution from vulnerable areas in two of Honduras’s Bay Islands — Utila and Guanaja — and from the port of Trujillo on the country’s northern Caribbean coast.