$17 million appeal launched
for major Nicaraguan disaster


The United Nations World Food Programme launched a $17 million appeal to assist an estimated 100,000 persons who are victims of Hurricane Felix in Nicaragua.

A report from the United Nations outlines a major disaster. Rescue crews reported that they were stunned by the intensity of the destruction wrought along the impoverished country’s northern coast, said the U.S.

A team from the Costa Rican emergency commission is at work in nine communities about 12 hours north of Managua, the capital.

Initial reports from the U.N. agency said that of the almost 10,000 homes affected by the violent Category 5 hurricane, 80 per cent were destroyed. Almost 5,200 wells were contaminated and 6,000 latrines destroyed. Diarrhea among children is increasing and heavy rainfall is creating unsanitary conditions that have raised fears of worsening health conditions, it said.

The Nicaraguan Embassy in San José will be sending off at least two containers of aid this morning.

One container has what the embassy has collected over the last two weeks and includes canned foods, clothing and other non-perishable assistance.

The second container has some 60 million colons ($115,000) in food products and sanitary items that were donated by  Industrias DIPO, said a release from the embassy.

The emergency commission team already has carried some 20,000 kilos, some 22 tons, of food and personal items like soap and toothpaste, as well as blankets to northern Nicaragua.

The emergency commission said that the Costa Rican team was working in these communities: El Pollo, El Danto 1, Fruta Pan, Las Breñas, Cocal, Arena Lozo, Zopilote, Tipispan and Dieahill. The team is based in La Rosita, said the Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias.

“The victims of this catastrophe are among the poorest and most vulnerable people, not just in Nicaragua but in the whole Latin American region,” said William Hart, U.N. food program country director.

“As our staff arrive with supplies, it is clear they have been left with literally nothing. Everything is destroyed and their lives are in pieces. What we are discovering as we visit these remote areas is a desperate swathe of humanity that has been invisible to the outside world, and which now more than ever needs the help of outsiders,” he said.

“The numbers of people seriously affected continues to grow while at the same time, as more information comes in from this remote region, we realize just how violent and destructive Hurricane Felix really was,” Hart said. “Not only have entire villages up and down the coast been pummeled and flattened into the ground, but extensive damage has also been reported among those living as much as 100 kms. back from the coastline.”

Hurricane Felix, when it hit Sept. 4, also ripped out large quantities of coconut, banana and mango trees, depriving inhabitants of basic foods. The upcoming harvest of rice and other vital crops has been lost, and due to salt water damage to fields it is expected that December’s harvest may be lost or severely reduced.

Over the weekend, two ships carrying a combined total of 151 tons of U.N. food (enough for 15,000 people for 20 days) arrived in the battered coastal port of Bilwi (formerly Puerto Cabezas) after a two-day journey along the Escondido River. Bilwi has been cut off from overland transport after a key bridge was destroyed by Felix.

About 14 tons of the food (enough to feed 1,550 for 18 days) was then transported by two U. S. Air Force helicopters to the town of Raiti, one of more than 100 Miskito Indian communities along the coast. Without the helicopters, which have established an air bridge in the area, the journey would have taken over a week.

The U.N. Children’s Fund said it was seeking over $2 million in relief aid over the next six months for the hurricane victims.


Another real estate broker
grabbed by immigration


Immigration has nabbed another real estate broker who was living in Costa Rica on a tourist visa.

They identified her as Kytka Jezek, who also is known as Kytka Hilmar-Jezek. Ms. Jezek ran Kytka's Costa Rica for several years. She also is an author, educator, life coach, tutor, home school and raw foods consultant, according to one of her many Web pages.

She is believed to live in the Central Pacific and has been here for at least four years.

Ms. Jezek, 43, has 48 hours to appeal the finding by the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería. Otherwise she will be deported.

She becomes the second real estate broker this week to run afoul of immigration. Wednesday agents detained Adam Blackiston, 36, in Jacó. He was identified as a real estate dealer there, but he also is wanted to face a charge of growing marijuana in the U.S. State of Virginia, agents said. Because he was here illegally he was to be deported.

Ms. Jezek, who also answers to the name Kit, was turned in by her neighbors, according to immigration officials. However no one wants to comment in detail because Ms. Jezek was the subject of an unflattering article in El Diario Extra Thursday.


30-year term in homicide


A man, Cristian Flores Mora, who lured a seafood vendor to his death got 30 years in prison in the Tribunal de Juicio de Desamparados Thursday. A female accomplice, Maribel Gutiérrez Luna, got eight years for aggravate robbery.

The pair contacted  William Porras Zeledón on the pretext of buying shrimp and then robbed him and then shot him when the victim pulled his own gun in Linda Vista de Desamparados.