Tropical Storm Eta has made landfall in the Florida Keys, bringing heavy rains to already flooded city streets after leaving many dead and over 100 missing in Mexico and Central America.
Eta hit land late yesterday and the system's slow speed and heavy rains posed an enormous threat to South Florida, an area already drenched from more than 350mm of rain last month. Eta could dump an additional 150 to 300mm, forecasters said.
Beaches and coronavirus testing sites were closed, public transportation was shut down and some evacuations were in place.
"In some areas, the water isn't pumping out as fast as it's coming in," warned Miami Dade Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz.
Miami-Dade County mayor Carlos Gimenez said he was in frequent contact with county water officials about the struggle to drain the flooded waters, which has stalled vehicles, whitewashed some junctions and even crept into some homes.
Last night, authorities in Lauderhill, Florida, responded to a report of a car that had driven into a canal. Photos taken by fire units on the scene about 30 miles north of Miami showed rescuers searching high waters near a car park.
Firefighters pulled one person from a car and took the patient to a hospital in critical condition, according to a statement from Lauderhill Fire.
Eta had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph this morning and was centred about 45 miles north-northwest of Key West, Florida, and 65 miles south of Naples. It was moving west-northwest at 13 mph.
On the forecast track, Eta was expected to move out into the south-eastern Gulf of Mexico and intensify into a hurricane late today or tomorrow.
In the Florida Keys, the mayor ordered mandatory evacuations for mobile home parks, campgrounds and campervan parks and those in low-lying areas.
Several schools districts closed, saying the roads were already too flooded and the winds could be too gusty for buses to transport students. Several shelters also opened in Miami and the Florida Keys.
The storm swelled rivers and flooded coastal zones in Cuba, where 25,000 had been evacuated, but there were no reports of deaths.
Authorities in Guatemala yesterday raised the known death toll there to 27 from 15 and said more than 100 were missing, many of them in the landslide in San Cristobal Verapaz.
Local officials in Honduras reported 21 dead, though the national disaster agency had confirmed only eight.
Eta initially hit Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane, and authorities from Panama to Mexico were still surveying the damages following days of torrential rains during the week.
In Guatemala, search teams first had to overcome multiple landslides and deep mud just to reach the site where officials have estimated some 150 homes were devastated.
In southern Mexico, across the border from Guatemala, 20 people died as heavy rains attributed to Eta caused mudslides and swelled streams and rivers, according to Chiapas state civil defence official Elias Morales Rodriguez.
