Huge Hurricane Felix threatens Central America

TEGUCIGALPA, Sept 3 (Reuters) Hurricane Felix, a potentially devastating storm, barreled toward Honduras where tens of thousands of people prepared to evacuate today in fear of a repeat of a deadly 1998 hurricane.

Felix weakened near midday to a still-powerful Category 4 storm with 145-mph (230-km) winds as it targeted the Bay Islands in the Caribbean, popular with foreign tourists.

The Honduran Navy said it would sent ships to pick up residents and private airlines set up flights to take 600 tourists off the islands.

Civil protection authorities sought to evacuate at least 72,000 people, including large groups of Miskito Indians, from low-lying coastal areas and the islands.

''We are faced with a very serious threat to lives and property.

The most important thing is that people pay heed to the call for evacuation so that we don't have to count bodies later,'' said Marco Burgos, head of Honduras' civil protection agency.

Felix, the second hurricane of the 2007 season, was for hours a top-ranked Category 5 storm like last month's Hurricane Dean which killed 27 people in the Caribbean and Mexico. The US National Hurricane Center said the storm could still restrengthen.

Category 5 hurricanes can cause huge damage and are considered rare.

But there were four of them in the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, including Katrina, and having two of them in a row tear through the Caribbean this year could boost claims that global warming may produce stronger tropical cyclones.

A tropical storm, Henriette, headed for Mexico's Baja California peninsula after killing 6 people in the resort city of Acapulco at the weekend.

Much of the area where Hurricane Felix was due to pass in Honduras, a coffee producing country, is sparsely populated lowland where roads are few and often inundated at this time of year. Travel is by plane or boat along the many rivers that crisscross the territory.

BAD MEMORIES But memories of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 still strike fear into Honduras, one of the poor Central American countries worst hit.

Some 10,000 people died in the region in mudslides and flooding.

''Besides asking God to prevent a catastrophe, we are buying water, food and medicine and boarding up windows,'' said Silvia Sierra, a resident of Roatan island off the northern coast.

In 1974, Hurricane Fifi killed up to 8,000 people in Honduras after grazing the Caribbean coast and dumping up to 24 inches (61 cm) of rain on the northern mountains.

Felix was due to clip northern Honduras tomorrow morning and then hit southern Belize and move through the Peten jungle region of Guatemala and into southern Mexico.

Whether Felix would be able to reemerge over the Bay of Campeche, where Mexico has its major offshore oil fields, and strengthen again in the Gulf of Mexico was unclear.

By 2330 IST, Felix was around 305 miles (490 km) east of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the border between Nicaraguan and Honduras and speeding westward at 21 mph (33 kph), a brisk pace for a storm, the US National Hurricane Center said.

It was a small storm, with hurricane force winds only extending out around 30 miles (48 km) from its center. Tropical storm force winds could be felt 115 miles (185 km) from the core where the most destructive winds are located.

Its rains might be as severe a threat as its ferocious winds.

Felix was expected to drop 5 to 8 inches (12.7 to 20.3 cm) of rain across northern Honduras and northeastern Nicaragua. In some areas, 12 inches (30.5 cm) of rain could fall, possibly producing dangerous flashfloods and mudslides.

The US energy industry, skittish about storms since hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 toppled rigs, cut pipelines and flooded refineries, was monitoring Felix carefully.

But companies said they had yet to evacuate platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, where a third of US domestic crude is produced and 15 percent of its natural gas.

REUTERS PY KN0001