But by Saturday regional airports reopened and highways were cleared of obstacles. Many residents bought supplies ahead of Patricia’s arrival.
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Patricia has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves across Mexico. “Everyone was in real shock”.
It has been labeled a Category 5 hurricane, the highest rating possible, and experts have warned it could trigger 40-foot waves and severe flash flooding.
The major Mexican cargo port of Manzanillo reopened on Saturday afternoon after avoiding the worst of the storm, an official said.
Brian Shelley, a tourist from Chicago, rode out the storm eating burgers with other guests at a boutique hotel on a hill in Puerto Vallarta.
And of course, while Patricia made landfall in a sparsely populated area, the eye of Katrina’s storm was nearby to New Orleans; location is everything.
While the residents of Chamela lost almost everything, most of the region incredibly suffered relatively little damage and the authorities rejoiced that no deaths were reported.
Hurricane Patricia quickly grew in intensity Thursday and by Friday had 200 miles per hour winds and was being called the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
A city cleaner sweeps normal leaves and debris from a seafront walkway, the morning after Hurricane Patricia passed further south sparing Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, October 24, 2015.
According to the 2010 census, there were more than 7.3 million inhabitants in Jalisco state and more than 255,000 in Puerto Vallarta municipality. But the National Hurricane Center is warning of massive rain and flooding across sections of the USA next week. Over the years, it has hosted a number of world leaders and billionaires.
“We were sobbing, I thought everything was going to collapse around us”, said Jose Angel Perez, 58, who sells coconuts in the municipality of Casimiro Castillo in Jalisco state, which lay in the storm’s path. Whipping winds blew part of his roof away. But there was no word yet on the state of the resort.
Patricia rapidly lost power once it travelled inland.
“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 address late Friday. But he urged Mexicans not to lower their guard yet. Meteorological authorities compared it to Typhoon Haiyan, which killed over 6,300 people in the Philippines in 2013.
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He couldn’t get a flight out before the storm hit and chose to hunker down in the hotel.
