Islanders flee rising sea levels

Hammocks began appearing this week in the doorways of 300 new houses built in what was previously a yucca field along Panama’s Caribbean coast for families from the country’s first low-lying island evacuated due to rising sea levels.

- JUAN ZAMORANO

An Indigenous Guna woman waits to transfer from Carti Sugtupu island to the mainland in Panama.

Indigenous Guna families from the island of Gardi Sugdub ferried stoves, gas cylinders, mattresses and other belongings first in boats and then in trucks to the community of Isberyala. They quickly saw differences.

“Here it’s cooler,” said 73-year-old Augusto Walter, hanging his hammock on Wednesday in the tidy two-bedroom house with a backyard. “There (on the island) at this time of day, it’s an oven.”