Authorities in Mexico are warning of flash flood and mudslides, as one of the strongest storms ever recorded hit its Pacific coast without causing significant damage.
Advertisement
“The first reports confirm that the damage has been less than those expected from a hurricane of this magnitude”, President Enrique Peña Nieto said in a taped video statement late Friday.
The storm quickly lost power as it moved inland, and by 5 p.m. ET Saturday it had been downgraded to a remnant low pressure system, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. The Category 5 storm – which peaked offshore with winds of 200 miles an hour – ultimately inflicted less damage than many feared: The brunt of the hurricane did not reach the heavily populated cities of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo.
Patricia’s effect was felt mostly in four coastal states, Colima, Jalisco, Michoacan and Nayarit.
The Weather Channel said that although thousands of homes were damaged in the state of Jalisco, no storm-related casualties were reported.
“Many people remained in their homes in high-risk zones, and it’s too soon to know what happened to all of them”, he said. “I repeat, we still can’t let our guard down”. By Saturday afternoon, it had degenerated from a tropical depression with maximum winds down to about 30 miles per hour (48 kph), the Miami-based Hurricane Center said.
Hurricane Patricia continues to weaken, dropping to a Category 1 storm as it crosses Mexico.
Rain continued to be a major concern in the Mexican mountains and for Texas, where eight to 12 inches were predicted and a few spots could receive as much as 20 inches, according to meteorologists.
Hurricane devastation is often due more to a combination of unfortunate circumstances rather than the sheer size of the storm.
Further north, around 15 000 tourists had been hastily evacuated from the busy beach resort of Puerto Vallarta.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it has helped a number of Australians impacted by Hurricane Patricia in Mexico as the country mops up following the mega-storm.
“We should be happy that the results have not been those that at one point we were expecting”, said Ruiz.
Advertisement
“If this was moving slower, if it had stalled out over Mexico, we’d be looking at a catastrophic flooding event, but that’s not the case here”, he added.
