Tegucigalpa (Honduras): US military helicopters began flying aid to survivors in central America on Sunday as Gamma, the 24th major storm in a record-breaking hurricane season, weakened after killing 14 people.
Gamma slowed to a tropical depression and meandered off the Honduran coast with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kmph).
The storm swiped Central America on Saturday and killed at least 14 people, three in a plane crash on its way to a luxury jungle lodge owned by film director Francis Ford Coppola.
In Honduras, 11 people died and 12,000 evacuees remained in shelters.
As rainfall eased, US helicopters began carrying 140 tonnes of food and other supplies to 50,000 victims in indigenous communities on the Caribbean coast, said Marlon Zelaya of the national disaster agency Copeco.
In El Progreso, residents stayed in temporary roadside huts because much of the city remained under water. The village of Palacios on the Atlantic coast was split in two by a sea surge.
The brunt of the storm spared Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, which is recovering from a battering by hurricane Wilma three weeks ago. But about 100 people in a fishing village were evacuated due to heavy rain.
Earlier in October, Hurricane Stan killed up to 2,000 people in Central America as flash floods and mudslides washed away several villages.
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