Honduras maps its new country
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.IN TERMS of world attention, last year's Hurricane Mitch put Honduras on the map. But the floods and landslides nearly wiped the little Central American nation off it.
So great was the damage cartographers are redrawing the map of the country. Mitch widened rivers, wiped away entire villages, killed more than 5,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands to relocate.
"The hurricane changed the course of rivers and disrupted the geographical situation of numerous highways, railways and the location of human settlements," said Noe Pineda Portilo, head of the country's National Geographical Institute, which is about to start the project.
Light aircraft, which have just completed distributing aid around the country, will be flown again to take photo-graphs that will be used as a basis for the new national map.
They will concentrate on banana-producing areas in the north and south and near the Nicaraguan border, where five days of torrential post-Mitch rains did the worst damage.
In the northern area around Trujillo tidal waves wiped out entire towns, extending the coast inland by up to a mile in some places. The main road through the coastal town ofSanta Rosa de Aguan now looks like a river after the Caribbean ocean spilt inland.
In the capital, Tegucigalpa, the Choluteca river burst its banks and, more than three months later, is still several times wider than it was before.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments