El Salvador hurricane kills 124
Updated on 09 November 2009
Hurricane Ida heads towards the Gulf of Mexico after severe wind and rain causes rivers to burst and hillsides to collapse, sweeping away thousands of homes in El Salvador.
El Salvador's government said 124 people were killed as mudslides and floods swept away rudimentary houses and cut off parts of the mountainous interior from the rest of the country.
The bulk of the Central American country's coffee is grown in areas far from the worst effects of the flooding, but the national coffee association had no estimate of potential damage to the harvest.
Ida first became a hurricane on Thursday off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where heavy rains forced more than 5,000 people into shelters.
Hurricane Ida has now weakened to a category one storm as it heads toward oil and gas facilities in the central Gulf of Mexico.
Ida's top sustained winds fell to 90 miles per hour and was expected to weaken further in the next 24 hours, the US National Hurricane Center said.
But Ida was still expected to be a hurricane as it approached the US Gulf Coast. The hurricane is forecast to hit somewhere between Louisiana and Florida.
US oil companies have shut production and evacuated workers from the gulf in the face of Ida.
Oil rose more than $1 to above $78 a barrel on Monday on fears the hurricane would cut US oil and gas supplies. Several large producers shut down some oil and gas production as a precautionary measure.
