Freak Weather News 9.8.01

DROUGHT SPREADS HUNGER IN CENTRAL AMERICA, DEVASTATING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
ABC News 08/09/2001 Internet: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20010809_242.htm

AGUA CALIENTE, Guatemala (AP) The old man walked between twisted, pale corn stalks incrusted in the dry earth. "This harvest was supposed to support my family for the rest of the year," said Elias Marroquin, a 64-year-old farmer in this village 75 miles northwest of the Guatemalan capital. A few miles away, 75-year-old Felipa Claveria sat on a wooden chair in her adobe kitchen and waited for her son Oscar to bring her some food. "What am I going to cook if the harvest is lost?" she asked.

Marroquin and Claveria are among more than 600,000 Central American peasants devastated by a drought that has tormented the region for months. More than 740,000 acres of corn, rice and beans have been destroyed across Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The traditionally rainy month of May, when the first harvest of the year is planted, came without a drop. There has been little rain since. Jordan Dey, spokesman for the World Food Program, said the crisis is causing food shortages and starvation in parts of Honduras and Nicaragua. He said the crisis has emptied out warehouses of the World Food Program and appealed for more donations.

Dey counted 266,000 peasants in Honduras and 107,000 in Nicaragua as suffering from hunger, and said the drought is affecting 200,000 peasants in El Salvador and 63,500 in Guatemala. The ministers of agriculture of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador on Wednesday called an emergency meeting for Friday in El Salvador to discuss how to respond to the crisis. Honduras declared a state of emergency in much of the country last month after the drought destroyed 80 percent of its annual production of basic grains. Dey said Nicaragua has lost about 50 percent of its crops.

El Salvador also called a state of emergency, which destroyed most crops in eastern farming regions. Guatemala's overall losses have been less 5 percent of the corn crop and 1.5 percent of the beans. But in the bone-dry east that is little consolation; eastern Guatemala has lost 80 percent of its beans. Marroquin estimates his own losses at 100 percent the $150 that he and his five sons normally are able to put together from a year of farming. "We were left without money and without harvest," he said.

600,000 PEOPLE AFFECTED BY CENTRAL AMERICAN DROUGHT
9 August 2001:In parts of Central America there has been little or no rain since April. Nicaragua has lost half its crops. El Salvador and Honduras have declared the drought a State of Emergency.