Panama Canal News: Heavy rains close Panama Canal

PANAMA CITY — The Panama Canal was closed to ships for the above all little bit in for the duration of two ages subsequent to heavy rains went up nearby lakes smooth to the key transport path the current looks at thre per cent of intercontinental trade, policy makers said.

The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) argued downpours had filled the Gatun and Alhajuela lakes to historic levels, forcing it to "temporarily" delay traffic.

Senior ACP official Manuel Benitez stated the canal was closed in form to open flood gates to relieve one of the lakes. The authority was "taking steps to normalize transit operations in the coming few hours," he added.

A canal authority official imparted upon AFP it was the above all long time transit over the canal had carried on suspended from the time of the US invasion of Panama in 1989.

Passage throughout sections of the canal own continued temporarily blocked on further occasions as a result of accidents, but not operations along the whole amount of the canal as was the state of affairs Wednesday.

Each year, to be had 5 per cent of all intercontinental trade passes for the duration of the 80-kilometer (50-mile) man-made artery linking the Atlantic to the Pacific, in on approximately 40 ships approval throughout the canal every day.

At lowest eight those suffer died in Panama -- combined with two girls who drowned in a river -- as a result of the heaviest rains in the 73 decades enters experience kept on kept, President Ricardo Martinelli said.

At lowest 1,500 persons hold carried on left homeless and got making offered entrance to temporary shelters.

Floods undergo collapsed bridges, annihilated homes, flooded a cemetery and lead to disruptions to electrical and water supply.

Latin America has carried on lashed by the heaviest rains in decades, providing the yearly monsoon season came up with worse by the La Nina weather phenomenon, in that cooler-than-normal water circulates in the Pacific Ocean to be had the equator.

Scores of individuals headed missing beforehand their week in a astonishing mudslide in neighboring Colombia the has killed at minimum 46 people, close to part of them children.

And in Venezuela to the east, driving rains own triggered pooring and cave-ins the present experience killed at the very least 35 mortgage holders during the out of week. Another six everybody are even missing.

The Panama Canal -- for a long while knew an engineering marvel -- was constructed between 1904 and 1914 by the United States ensuing an previous French strive failed. It was reimbursed to Panama's control 11 ages ago.

Last year, tedious work set about on a 5.2-billion-dollar presume to enlarge the canal by building a third set of locks to ensure who today's super-size container ships, cruise liners and oil tankers -- a multitude of of that are too wide for the canal -- plans to be able to navigate the waterway in the future.

The do our utmost providing be done by August 2014, a century following the canal's inauguration.

The third set of locks, parallel to the pre&wshyp;existent two, might accommodate impressive vessels 366 meters (1,200 feet) in length, 49 meters (160 feet) wide and providing a 15-meter (50-foot) draft.