Fridays wind
February 9th, 2009 | by admin |Strong winds knocked out electricity to more than 200,000 people in five Costa Rican provinces Thursday and another 240 people had to be evacuated to escape rising rivers, said news reports and government agencies.
An unknown number of people remained without power Friday.
At least five people were injured by falling trees on highways as a cold front with heavy rain and winds of up to 100 kph (62 mph) moved through the area, reports said.
The National Meteorological Institute forecast that the rough weather would remain through the weekend.
“This is worse than an earthquake,” Fructuoso Garrido, distribution chief for the National Company for Power and Light, told the Prensa Libre newspaper. “At least with an earthquake we take out [damaged] equipment and replace it with another. But in this case, this situation just keeps on going and going and to a general level.”
