Nicaragua today evacuated 12,000 people from its coastline as Hurricane Felix struck land with the potential to wreak catastrophic damage.
The maximum-strength, category-five storm, with winds of 160mph, ripped off roofs and brought down electricity lines only two weeks after Hurricane Dean struck Mexico, further up the Caribbean coast.
"The wind is terrible. There's a roaring when it pulls the roofs off the houses," Lumberto Campbell, a local official in Puerto Cabezas, told a radio station before being cut off.
"There is no electricity because all the posts that hold up the cables have fallen down. The metal roofs come off like shaving knives and are sent flying against the trees and homes."
Felix landed around dawn at Punta Gorda. It was the first time two category-five hurricanes had hit land in the same area since records began, in 1886, according to the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration.
Rogelio Flores, head of civil defence for the affected area, said officials had received distress calls from three boats at sea with a total of 49 people on board, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
He said more than 12,000 people had been evacuated. But many Miskito Indians, who were part of a British protectorate until the 19th century, refused to leave low-lying areas on the coast and head to shelters set up in schools. Some 35,000 Miskitos live in Honduras, and more than 100,000 in Nicaragua.
The only path to safety is up rivers and across lakes that are too shallow for large boats, but many people lack sufficient petrol to make long journeys. Provincial officials estimated 18,000 people would have to find their own way to higher ground.
Telephones and power were out in much of the region, making it difficult to find out what was happening as the storm's winds began hitting the remote, swampy area, much of which is reachable only by canoe.
The Nicaraguan government sent in some soldiers before the storm hit but was preparing to send in more to help once the hurricane has passed.
In Honduras's seaside resort of La Ceiba, residents spent the night reinforcing flimsy house walls with plywood and sandbags.
"It's going to be strong, but we have faith that Christ will protect us," said Sandra Hernandez, 37,watching satellite images of the storm on television.
In the final hours before Felix hit land, Grupo Taca airlines airlifted tourists from the Honduran island of Roatan, popular for its pristine reefs and diving resorts. Another 1,000 people were removed from low-lying coastal areas and smaller islands.
Bob Shearer, 54, from Butler, Pennsylvania, said he was disappointed his family's scuba diving trip to Roatan had been cut short by the evacuation order.
"I only got seven dives in. I hope they didn't jump the gun too soon," he said as he waited for a flight home.
The US national hurricane centre in Miami said Felix could dump up to 30cm (12in) of rain in isolated parts of northern Honduras and north-eastern Nicaragua, possibly bringing flash floods and mudslides.
Felix, the second hurricane of the Atlantic season after Dean, prompted fears of a repeat of 1998, when Hurricane Mitch devastated the region.
Felix was following the same path as Mitch, a sluggish storm that stalled for a week over Central America, killing nearly 11,000 people and leaving more than 8,000 missing, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua.
The Honduras civil protection head, Marco Burgos, said: "We are faced with a very serious threat to lives and property. The most important thing is that people pay heed to the call for evacuation so that we don't have to count bodies later."
The World Food Programme said its stocks in the region could feed 600,000 people for a month.
Meanwhile, off Mexico's Pacific coast, tropical storm Henriette reached hurricane strength and was on a path to hit the resort-studded tip of the Baja California peninsula.
Before dawn, strong waves pounded beaches, rain fell in sheets and strong winds whipped palm trees.
More than 100 people spent the night in makeshift shelters as the storm approached, and more were expected to leave their homes. Police in Cabo San Lucas, Baja, yesterday said high surf stirred up by Henriette had led to the drowning of an unidentified woman.
Over the weekend, the storm caused flooding and landslides that killed six people in Acapulco.
Dean, the first storm of the Atlantic season, killed 27 people in the Caribbean and Mexico last month. Only 31 such storms have been recorded in the Atlantic, eight of them in the last five years.