It was late October, 1998, and in northern Nicaragua the rainy season had all but ended. The first harvest of the year had been lost to drought, and all hopes were on the second harvest, only one month away. From day to day there was sporadic drizzle, just right for the fields of red beans that were slowly gathering strength.

Then, quickly and determinedly, from a leaden sky, the rains began to fall. It was a loud, steady rain, the likes of which Nicaraguans had never experienced before, and in some parts of the country, it fell for seven straight days. The newspapers had mentioned a hurricane forming off the Atlantic Coast, but Nicaraguans hadn't given much thought to the storm, named "Mitch," which had shifted course to the north, barely grazing the Atlantic Coast.

But Mitch was enormous and robust, with thick gray arms of clouds that swept in long spirals across the entire Central American isthmus, greedily gathering strength from both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Off the north coast of Honduras, where Mitch had all but parked, winds around the eye of the hurricane had reached 290 kilometers per hour, making it a deadly class five storm, and Nicaragua would not escape its force. Hurricane Mitch was lethal to a degree never seen in the western hemisphere in recorded history, and even though it didn't pass directly over Nicaragua, the rains that fell there were so devastating--physically and psychologically--that many Nicaraguans will be measuring life "before and after Mitch" for generations to come.

The rains fell day and night, scarcely letting up for an hour at a time. On Thursday, October 29, the electricity failed in most of the north as power lines fell and poles were swept away. The country roads of red earth turned muddy, then became dangerous rivers of coffee-colored water coursing through the center of towns. Cattle that had been left in the fields found high ground under trees, or were drowned and swept away. The rivers rose quickly and mercilessly, as the waters swelled into violent masses, tearing out the trees along their banks, snatching away thousands of homes, and spilling far beyond their banks. The debris carried away by the waters became deadly ballast, as enormous tree trunks, boulders, and mud came roaring down out of the mountains, carrying away bridges, buildings, and bodies.

Along the Pacific Coast, in Chinandega, the rains were particularly ruthless, dumping the equivalent of a full year's rainfall in under four days. By October 29, the rivers of northern Nicaragua had risen to ten times their normal size, overtopping, cutting around, or simply mangling and carrying away every bridge in their path. In Sébaco, the Río Viejo and the Río Grande de Matagalpa, which normally pass within a kilometer of each other, rose and combined, unleashing a wall of water on Ciudad Darío. Nicaragua's three principal hydropower reservoirs overflowed, unleashing torrents of water through their spillways and causing erosion damage that all but carried the dams away.

Just outside of Managua, the waters of Lake Xolotlán rose three meters (that's 3,300,000,000 cubic meters of water) over three days. Rising up and flowing out of the lake basin, the waters barreled through the old, dry channel of the once-intermittent Río Tipitapa, raising the level of Lake Cocibolca and the Río San Juan as the waters traveled out to the Atlantic Ocean. Tipitapa, a lowland city built in the saddle between the two lakes, was half submerged by the river. On the Pan-American highway, the enormous bridge that crosses over the Tipitapa river was damaged, then destroyed, and finally carried away completely. The entire northern half of the country was cut off from Managua. Major bridges were missing in Sébaco and Tipitapa, and every bridge without exception between León and Managua had been destroyed.

Meanwhile, near Chinandega, the crater of Volcán Casita had been filling with rainwater and at 2 P.M. on October 30, the southwest edge of the crater lip liquified and broke off, descending in a torrent of mud, water, and rock 1.5 kilometers wide and three meters high, completely consuming several entire communities that inhabited the volcano's slopes, and killing thousands in a single moment. The mud flow poured southwest for a distance of over four kilometers to the highway, crossed it, and continued southwest into the town of Posoltega. In the aftermath there was no hope of recovering or even identifying victims. Teams were sent out to collect and burn the bodies before their advanced state of decomposition caused further health problems for the living.

Across Nicaragua, the losses continued even after the rains stopped. Campesinos who hadn't lost their homes lost much of what little they had. Cattle drowned or died from exposure, and the harvest was completely lost. Outbreaks of mosquito born diseases like dengue fever ensued, not to mention thousands of cases of pink eye and skin fungus caused from the moisture. In small towns like Condega, Estelí, Mitch washed the town's three factories away, leaving the entire town without industry. The nation as a whole found itself at a standstill. Refugees occupied the schools and churches, and some communities waited nearly three months before electricity was restored to them.

The national economy fared no better-it is estimated that Hurricane Mitch reduced Nicaragua's gross domestic product by half, and decimated over 70 percent of the physical infrastructure of the country. Hundreds of health clinics were destroyed, as well as over 20,000 homes. Arable farmland was reduced by 11,550 hectares due to erosion, deposition of sand, or flooding. Overall, economic losses sustained by this already suffering country were around $1.5 billion.

Hurricane Mitch also opened up scars less obvious than those of the deforested hillsides. Rather than increasing the sense of Nicaraguan solidarity in the process of rebuilding, political divisions were opened like raw wounds as the aid money poured in and politicians struggled to divert it to their own--and their constituents'--interests. President Alemán, never one to pass up an opportunity to further himself politically at the cost of a tragedy, fed fuel to this noxious fire. When the Sandinista mayor of Posoltega reported to Managua the tragedy that had occurred there, Alemán called her crazy and stalled the relief. The first day after the rains diminished, a planeload of Cuban doctors bearing crates of medical supplies landed on the tarmac in Managua and Alemán sent them away, saying his country had many starving people and couldn't afford to be sharing the limited supplies of food with additional visitors. A day later, Alemán greeted an aircraft of gringos by strutting across the tarmac with his arms outstretched in an open embrace.

Though the press called Mitch "the storm of the century," scientists estimate it was much more severe even than that, declaring it the most deadly storm event in at least 200 years. Mitch has given Nicaragua the chance to rebuild itself, to grow, and to learn. Hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money poured into Nicaragua in its aftermath, and the destroyed bridges were replaced with new, better quality ones. Campesinos who lost their little homes were given new ones of concrete with corrugated steel roofs. Schools were rebuilt, new clinics constructed. Above all, in the post-Mitch years, much effort has gone into ensuring the Nicaraguan government and people are better prepared to deal with future disasters: training, flood warning detection systems, computer models, and more have been installed. They are all important steps, given that Hurricane Mitch will surely not be the last storm to wreak havoc in Nicaragua.