Hurricane Felix left 65 people dead in Nicaragua, the authorities said Sunday, according to dpa. However, national media, using data from search crews, reported 170 deaths. The uncertainty about the death toll can be attributed to the inaccessibility of some of the areas hit by the hurricane. Felix struck Nicaragua's poor north-east on Tuesday as a category five hurricane, with sustained winds of up to 260 kilometres an hour. It devastated entire Miskito communities and the city of Puerto Cabezas, with 60,000 residents, 580 kilometres north of the capital Managua. Reports said that many people heard the hurricane warning too late or not at all as the storm had been expected to miss Nicaragua. Nicaragua's civil authorities said that 70,000 people were affected by Felix. Some 18,500 people were brought to safety and 16,600 houses were destroyed or damaged. Most of the crops in the area were also destroyed.
