Word: fifi
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Booth steps into one of the hottest spots in U.S. business. United Brands lost $47 million in 1974 (on sales of more than $2 billion), as both of its main businesses-John Morrell & Co., a meatpacking firm, and Chiquita bananas -turned down. The losses were caused chiefly by Hurricane Fifi, which destroyed 70% of United Brands' banana crops in Honduras, and a sharp rise in the cost of cattle feed...
Hours after Hurricane Fifi slammed into Honduras, a crew met at a New Windsor, Md., warehouse and assembled 1,000 Ibs. of children's clothing, 3,000 blankets, and enough water-purification tablets and drugs to protect a good-sized city against epidemic. The goods were airlifted at once to Miami, then flown to Honduras...
...Honduras' impoverished campesinos took much interest in radio reports on the progress of Hurricane Fifi as it churned on a seemingly aimless course off the Central American coast. Only two weeks before, a far more powerful hurricane, dubbed Carmen by meteorologists, had brushed past without inflicting major damage; Fifi sounded as frivolous as its name...
...name belied reality. As Hurricane Fifi slowly swept along the coast, torrential rains on its periphery dumped 20 in. of water on the high Sierra de Omoa in just 40 hours. Rivers and streams swelled uncontrollably, sending walls of water rolling down into the valleys that produce the country's basic crops of bananas, coffee and beans. Entire towns and villages were washed away in the flashfloods. The government set the death toll at 8,000, and even though other estimates put the figure at 2,000, it was the worst disaster in Honduras' recorded history...
Quick Help. In the Sierra de Omoa, the mountains were gashed with ugly long scars as if Fifi had been a gigantic cat and had clawed out the hillsides and gullies with its nails. Said Farmer Joaquin Ramirez Castro: "Our coffee and beans have all been washed away. Little villages have been swept down the hills with landslides. Some towns have been covered. Others are marooned and need help. I don't know whether my family is living or dead...