A man hands a baby to her mother during an evacuation operation after flooding caused by Hurricane Felix in the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, eastern Honduras. The remnants of Hurricane Felix caused flooding, landslides and at least 18 deaths in Central America through Wednesday.

Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua ? Doctors threw together a makeshift clinic Wednesday to tend to the injured after powerful Hurricane Felix flooded their hospital and wrecked villages on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. Remnants of the storm drenched Central America in rain and the death toll rose to at least 18 with dozens more missing.

Far to the northwest, Hurricane Henriette plowed into Mexico for the second time in two days, making landfall shortly before 8 p.m. CDT near the port city of Guaymas with top sustained winds of 75 mph. Seven deaths were reported from the Pacific storm, which hit Baja California on Tuesday.

Felix came ashore Tuesday as a Category 5 storm, killing at least 18 people across Nicaragua, said Alvaro Rivas, a spokesman for Nicaragua’s Civil Defense Department. He said at least 10 people were missing in and around Puerto Cabezas and more than 50 in the Matagalpa province in the north.

The dead included a man who drowned when his boat capsized, a woman killed when a tree fell on her house and a newborn who died shortly after birth because her mother couldn’t get medical attention.

Among the missing were four fishermen whose small sailboat sank as Felix’s center passed overhead. A survivor, Fernando Pereira, 24, said he clung to a piece of wood for 12 hours, despite a dislocated shoulder, and washed ashore at the village of Sandy Bay only hours after Felix made landfall there. He hadn’t seen his friends since.

“I felt horrible,” he said. “I was drinking salt water, and I thought I was going to die.”

Others were caught in the sea as well. Jelivaro Climax, 22, said he had to swim through enormous waves to reach shore.

“Lightning flashed through a pitch black sky,” he said. “I don’t know how I survived. I swam with everything I had, and I was sure the sea would take me.”

Felix swept over the Miskito Coast, an impoverished region where about 150,000 people live in jungle settlements. Their hamlets of wooden shacks and coconut groves are remote even in good weather, reachable only by air or flat-bottom boats.

The Miskitos, descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves, live semiautonomously, much like people on Indian reservations in the U.S.

There wasn’t enough fuel after the storm for boats to make long trips, and Felix snapped steel cables that guided a small ferry carrying people and cars from Puerto Cabezas to the village of Wawahum.

Johana Aliberto Maquiave, 36, was stuck in Puerto Cabezas, trying to get back to her family in Sandy Bay, the village where the eye of the storm hit.

“I want to know what happened to my three children,” she said, fighting tears. “The poor kids stayed with their dad. I am here with nothing. I came on Sunday to buy food.”

Felix wiped out crops and damaged most of the 70 tons of food and emergency goods that had been flown in before the storm.

On Wednesday, it was hard to find a building that wasn’t damaged. Puerto Cabezas’ hospital was filled with water, and doctors attended to the injured at an improvised clinic.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega flew over the area to survey the damage. He said that the U.S. and Venezuela offered aid and that Cuban doctors were already on the ground. Nicaragua’s military flew in sheets, mattresses, food and first aid materials.