Friday November 2, 2001

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Tropical Storm Michelle quickly gathered strength yesterday in the Caribbean, battering Honduras and Nicaragua with flash floods.

Flooding from the storm has already killed four and forced more than 115,000 people from their homes over the past week. Another 19 people were reported missing, seven in Honduras and 12 in Nicaragua.

Cuba issued a hurricane watch for the western part of the island, including Havana, and forecasters urged residents of the Florida Keys to keep an eye on the storm's progress.

Michelle had winds up to 66 mph yesterday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami reported. While its path remained uncertain, the storm could threaten the coasts of Mexico, the United States or Cuba over the weekend.

In Honduras, the storm revived memories of 1998's much-stronger Hurricane Mitch, which killed 5,657 people and left $6.5 billion in damage.

"The rainfall being generated by the tropical storm are creating disaster situations similar to Hurricane Mitch on Honduras' Atlantic coast," said Juan Bendeck, head of the country's National Emergency Commission.

About 100,000 people in Honduras and 15,000 in Nicaragua were forced to flee their homes.

Bendeck said relief workers are trying to reach 100 small Honduran villages cut off by the flooding in Gracias a Dios province near the Nicaraguan border. There were reports that as many as 75,000 residents had been trapped for days there on rooftops or small patches of high ground.

Some were reportedly surviving by eating the carcasses of drowned farm animals that floated by on the flood waters, provincial officials said.

The coastal region has been hit with as much rain in the last five days as it normally gets in six months, said Ernesto Salgado, spokesman for the country's national weather service.

"It's a very serious situation," he said.

In Yoro, a city about 35 miles from the coast, flood victims were going hungry in government shelters because supplies could not get in, said Mayor Erlinda Martinez.

"The situation is critical. We're worried, because the rivers keep rising and there is no way we could get out" if the city is entirely flooded, Martinez told The Associated Press by telephone.

Some computerized forecasts show the storm striking the United States, perhaps by this weekend, but others show it turning west and striking Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said.

Richard Pasch, a meteorologist at the center, said the storm is in an area of warm water south of Cuba where previous hurricanes have gained strength. Weak steering winds have made its path hard to predict, he said.

"I don't think that we have any idea where it's going because the steering is very weak," Pasch said. "We're not saying there's a direct threat to anybody here in Florida now, but stay tuned."

A 2-year-old boy drowned in central Honduras on Wednesday as his father tried to carry him across a rain-swollen stream, bringing the number of drowning deaths in Honduras to four since Sunday.

Thousands of people were evacuated in the city of La Lima, 120 miles north of the Honduran capital. Rescue workers traveling through flooded streets in small boats were trying to reach hundreds more trapped on the roofs of their homes by floodwaters as deep as six feet.

Many flood victims erected temporary shelters of plastic tarps and wood on higher-lying roadways.

This week's rains heavily damaged sugar, banana and cattle ranches in Honduras, where crops were already failing because of a drought.