“The first reports confirm that the damage has been less than that corresponding to a hurricane of this magnitude”, President Enrique Peña Nieto said in a televised message.
Advertisement
“We had seen enough of hurricanes and the damage they cause on the news over the last three years, there was no way we were going to stick around”, said Mackie, whose group included young children and seniors. The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded Patricia to a Category 4 storm but said it remained an “extremely unsafe major hurricane”.
Though Hurricane Patricia touched down in Mexico on Friday night and brought heavy rain to Texas, Las Vegas won’t be seeing any of that moisture this weekend, according to the National Weather Service. “A large swath of Mexico will be at risk of torrential rainfall and mudslides as Patricia moves northward, and potentially could cause more damage than Patricia’s winds”, an expert tells the Wall Street Journal.
Echoing remarks by state authorities on Friday, Ruiz Esparza said there had been no fatalities in Jalisco, where the storm made landfall, nor in the neighboring states of Colima and Nayarit, although the secretary cautioned that that information was preliminary.
So far there have been no reports of casualties from the landslides but officials are telling everyone to stay safe.
However, the president also warned that “we can not yet let our guard down”.
Tens of thousands of people were moved to shelters on Friday in preparation of the hurricane.
In the face of winds capable of lifting vehicles and sweeping structures from their bases, the popular holiday resort of Puerto Vallarta and the major port of Manzanillo on the Mexican south-west coast were braced for imminent devastation. By 10 a.m. on Saturday the storm’s sustained winds dropped drastically to 35 miles per hour, and the central pressure has risen 110 millibars. As of Saturday, no deaths or injuries were reported and the hurricane’s strength had tapered off quickly.
Haiyan killed more than 6,300 people and wiped out or damaged practically everything in its path as it swept ashore on November 8, 2013, destroying around 90 percent of the city of Tacloban in Leyte province.
Advertisement
This was the most powerful storm to ever hit America.
