The Government of Nicaragua raised to 300 million dollars the damage caused by Juliawhich last October 9 hit with the strength of a category 1 hurricane and later degraded to a tropical storm, according to a preliminary report released this Saturday, October 15.
The Nicaraguan Executive had calculated last Thursday at between 160 and 200 million dollars the damage caused by the cyclone. However, the Government’s National Damage Assessment Commission raised it to 300 million dollars, about 2% of Nicaragua’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
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“We have been reviewing the preliminary report and the numbers have continued to move as we can have information flows as a result of the supervision coverage, of the verification in the different municipalities, and these have been increasing and we are over 300 million dollars, two points of GDP,” the Nicaraguan Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Iván Acosta, told official media.
The impact caused by Julia was “fundamentally in the infrastructure sector: approximately 220 million distributed in energy, transportation, road network, land transportation, telecommunications, public infrastructure,” the minister specified.
The official explained that the preliminary report does not include the damage caused by the natural phenomenon in the municipalities of El Rama, Laguna de Perlas and Bluefields, in the South Caribbean Autonomous Region of Nicaragua.
They continue to quantify damages and losses
Likewise, he said that the damages and losses in the productive sector amount to 25.7 million dollars, fundamentally in agriculture and livestock, and that they are still quantifying the losses in the fishing and tourism sectors.
Losses in the social sector are 61.6 million dollars, he explained.
According to the Government, Julia, whose winds were measured at up to 140 kilometers per hour, damaged highways, the electrical transmission system, the distribution network system, and the infrastructure of the health and education network system.
According to the government report, Julia left 1,122 kilometers of roads destroyed from the basic road network, 98 affected health units, including a regional hospital, 4 departmental hospitals, 18 primary hospitals, 17 health centers, and 42 health posts.
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Also 184 educational buildings were damaged, including those in the municipality of El Rama (southeast).
The co-director of the National System for Disaster Prevention, Mitigation and Attention (Sinapred), Guillermo González, assured that Julia was felt in 123 of the 153 municipalities of Nicaragua, and that some 800,000 families were exposed to the cyclone, that is, about four million Nicaraguans.
Julia caused damage to 15,000 homes “to varying degrees”, of which “almost 700” were “totally destroyed” and more than 8,000 homes with damage to their roofs, he said.
During the passage of the meteorological phenomenon over Nicaragua, more than 20,000 people were evacuated, without reports of human damage, according to Sinapred, although the Nicaraguan Army, local media and witnesses reported at least four victims in the context of Julia.
The Nicaraguan authorities have already initiated financing and cooperation efforts to deal with the losses.
