In the eye of the storm

Mr Gordon has worked as an aid worker in Oxford's twin town Leon for the past five years for Agencies for Personal Services Overseas(APSO), a charity funded by the Irish government.

After starting his career as a marine engineer, Mr Gordon went to Ruskin College, Oxford, between 1970-72 where he specialised in development problems. He has worked in both London and Scotland as well as Nicaragua.

This is Mr Gordon's dramatic account of a terrifying natural disaster There was only person who could find something remotely positive to say about the devastation of Hurricane Mitch, which hit the city of Leon in western Nicaragua.

"The war was worse," said Sister Joana, who helps run an old people's home in the neighbourhood of Sutiava.

The latest figures to be released shows 33,650 people have fallen victim to Mitch with at least 1,500 feared dead. However, there are 46 communities which are so isolated that no information on their condition is available.

Yesterday the skies cleared for the first time in five days. People took advantage of the break to visit relatives, do some shopping, and take stock of the damage, and in some cases to prepare their dead relatives for burial.

Ironically, today is traditionally celebrated in this religious city as the Day of the Dead. Leon has lost nine bridges. Most are located on the southern approaches to the city, and link it to the capital, Managua.

Some of them have been restored, with help from groups and organisations in Spain. The area between the bridges has been used as a model of city development.

The tiny Rio Chiquita has been cleaned up with railings and seats being placed along its banks. A focal point was a basketball court, complete with floodlights and surrounded by leafy trees which provided shade from the tropical sun which can give Leon Easter temperatures of around 40C.

Yesterday it was a wide open space. The trees had been washed out of the ground by floods which reached 20ft above road level in some places. The five-inch thick ferroconcrete base of the basketball court had been lifted by the previous day's rain and thrown aside, resting in the mud like a piece of crumpled cardboard.

The normally optimistic and cheerful, if at times a little prudish, Leoneses were stern faced as they walked across the already drying silt. The river level had dropped to its normal depth of less than a foot, almost as quickly as it had risen and swept all before it.

There was a sense of open space and quietness where there had once been bustle and activity. There was no bird song, no squeals of pigs in people's patios, no honking of car horns. Only the roar of a diesel engine as a municipal bulldozer pushed trees and debris aside. The council slogan, as on all municipal vehicles read, 'Propelling Development'. Not much chance of that for a while yet.

I stood on a straight row of red, regular, shapes which I realised was the bottom course of brick work that had once been a house. There was nothing else left. My wife, who comes from Leon, pointed across the street to the house of Isidro Moreira.

As befits a long established business family it was substantial and built of cement blocks - reinforced to withstand seismic shockwaves sent out from nearby, active volcanoes. The kitchen at the rear had dropped off and fallen into the river.

A little further down stream the Hernandez Moreno family were less lucky. Their house was still in one piece. But two brothers, both in their 20s - one a student at secondary school and the other a jeweller - had gone to the patio at the rear of their house to view the river for themselves. They became trapped in the mud, then the river rose over them and they were drowned.

Surreal scenes were everywhere. At the side of the road a huge, leafy tree had toppled over. Its uppermost branches dipping into the river 50ft below, its roots at street level, spread into the air. From its branches, half way down the river bank, emerged a man dragging a mutilated sheet of corrugated tin that could be recycled back into his home.

Hurricane Mitch has passed Leon, but horrendous damage reports are coming across the airwaves. - road transport for most is a non starter. There is even talk of Mitch, which came from the Atlantic, blowing into the Pacific and coming back to Leon as Hurricane Newton. I don't want to speculate on that.

What we need now are funds to buy food such as rice, sugar and cooking oil, milk for children, dry clothes, medicines to treat diarrhoea, skin and eye infections and respiratory problems. Nicaraguans are good at organising at community level. Schools and colleges have already been set up as refuge centres. The mayor, Dr. Rigoberto Sampson, is co-ordinating the city's emergency committee. This morning students were collecting whatever the least unfortunate could afford to give. And people were giving.

*The death toll from Hurricane Mitch grew to an estimated 9,000 today. Some 7,000 deaths occurred in Honduras. AN appeal to help Leon has been set up in Oxford.

So far 12 people are confirmed dead, 80 unaccounted for, 60 wounded, 1,237 houses destroyed and 33,650 people are homeless following the storm and floods.

Leon is twinned with Oxford and the Oxford-Leon Trust has been working in Nicaragua for more than 11 years. It aims to help the victims with safe water, shelter, food and drugs as soon as possible.

The mayor of Leon, Rigoberto Sampson, sent an appeal to the trust requesting help for the victims. Local hospitals and other groups in Leon are trying their utmost to help people affected by the disaster but they are limited by a lack of supplies.

Call 01865 251003 to help. The appeal has the official support of the Lord Mayor of Oxford.

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