Patricia made landfall a little after 6 p.m. Friday along a sparsely-populated part of Mexico’s southwest coast, and while it was still a Category 5 storm at that time, its strength had already dropped by nearly 20 percent from the 200 m.p.h. winds recorded while the storm was at sea on Friday morning.
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“Based upon reports received from our hotel partners and ground operator in Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit, the resort area sustained no major damage and the infrastructure remains intact”, said Jack Richards, president and CEO of Pleasant Holidays. But footage from Mexico’s Pacific coast showed cars and buses swept up in floods, streams of water inundating streets and fallen trees and lampposts. A few highways were blocked by mudslides.
So far, there has also been no reported fatalities.
“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.
He added, however, that “we can not yet let our guard down”.
Less than an hour after Patricia made landfall as a Category 5 storm – the fiercest – the National Hurricane Center said it was barreling inland over southwestern Mexico with maximum sustained wind speeds of 160 mph. Its center was about 135 miles (215 kilometers) southwest of Zacatecas, Mexico.
“Many of them were actually sent out to other places like Guadalajara or other major cities….”
“It was after midnight when we finally went to sleep but we were grateful for beds to sleep in”, Weaver said.
CNN reports small fishing villages are amongst the hardest hit.
People wait for the arrival of Hrricane Patricia at a shelter in the Pacific resort city of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Friday, October 23, 2015. However, the storm caused less damage than anticipated as it moved inland, plus no deaths have been reported.
More than a third of a million people were in the path of the storm.
The hurricane slowed down to 165 miles per hour as it reached land in Mexico and experts from the National Hurricane Center say that it will slow down more as it travels across the country. “A state of emergency has been declared in three states in Patricia’s path”.
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Authorities opened hundreds of shelters and announced plans to shut off electricity as a safety precaution.
