PANAMA CITY, Panama, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- The Panama Canal was closed to ship traffic Wednesday because of flooding in the region, officials said.
Prolonged heavy rains forced thousands of people to evacuate their flooded homes. Two 11-year-old children and an adult were missing, Newsroom Panama reported online.
The rains, which forecasters say will hang around for months, damaged Panamanian crops and roads, including the collapse of one to the Centennial Bridge.
The Panama Canal Authority said for the first time in its 96-year history, transit of ships was "temporarily suspended" because the Alajuela and Gatun lakes were at the highest levels ever recorded, Newsroom Panama said. The 48-mile-long, man-made shipping channel was closed in 1989 when the United States invaded Panama to depose strongman Manuel Noriega, and in 1915 and 1916 because of landslides, CNN reported.
Manuel Benitez, executive vice president of operations for the canal authority, said the closure was necessary because transit through the canal could be affected by the currents of the Chagres River, which flows into the channel on the way to Gamboa.
