Thousand-mile waves damage Central American coast

GUATEMALA CITY, June 21 (Reuters) A storm thousands of miles away sent huge waves across the Pacific to the Central American coast, damaging dozens of homes and properties in four countries, emergency services said.

Hugh Cobb, a forecaster with the US National Hurricane Center in Miami, said yesterday high seas off Central America's Pacific Coast were caused by ''a fairly strong wintertime'' storm that developed several days ago in the Southern Hemisphere, generating a large area of strong winds.

Waves measuring up to 12 feet, started moving across the Galapagos Islands on Sunday. They hit the Central America shoreline on Monday, Cobb said.

Local officials in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador reported relatively minor damage across the poor, disaster-prone region. There were no deaths.

Cobb said the storm's origin was ''on the order of probably several thousand miles'' from the Central American coastline.

''These swells can travel great distances ... this is a classic example,'' he said.

Guatemala's disaster relief agency said the storm that caused the waves could have happened as far away as New Zealand. The waves were diminishing in size and intensity yesterday.

Cobb said south-facing coastal areas of Central America were the hardest hit, with swells upward of 15 feet.

In Guatemala, about 20 homes and properties were flooded and two families evacuated. About 30 houses were flooded and 188 people evacuated in Nicaragua, 80 homes were damaged in Honduras and 30 in El Salvador, emergency services said.

Pacific storms have devastated Central America in the past. As a new tropical storm season begins, many villages in Guatemala and around the region are still in ruins from last year's Hurricane Stan that killed several thousand people, many in mudslides.

REUTERS SY BD1006