MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Five people have died after heavy rains, flooding and landslides linked to Hurricane Simon and Tropical Storm Rachel battered parts of Mexico’s Pacific coast, authorities said Monday.
Hurricane Simon claimed the life of a 71-year-old man in Chilpancingo, in the southern state of Guerrero, after a wall collapsed on him, Governor Evelyn Salgado said during the daily presidential press conference.
Tropical Storm Rachel has been blamed for the deaths of four members of one family, including two children, whose bodies were found on the outskirts of Ensenada in Baja California, the state prosecutor’s office reported.
Five other people remain missing, while security forces used helicopters to rescue 32 people, prosecutors said.
Flood And Wave Warnings Remain In Place
Simon did not make landfall and had weakened to Category 2 on the five-point Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale before moving away from the coast, authorities said.
However, officials maintained a rain alert and warned that waves of up to five metres were still expected in some coastal areas.
Flooding and landslides had already affected communities near rivers and streams in the states of Michoacan and Colima.
According to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), Simon was expected to approach Mexico’s west-central coast between Wednesday and Thursday.
Mexico’s national civil protection coordinator, Laura Velazquez, said the latest official forecast indicated that the hurricane would strike Mazatlan, in the state of Sinaloa, as a Category 1 storm.
Puerto Vallarta Residents Welcome Clear Skies
The tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta, which had been preparing for extreme weather, woke up on Monday to clear skies and a rainbow, an AFP team reported.
Residents exercised along the beach resort’s seafront promenade as powerful waves continued to crash against the coast.
Magda Flores, 55, told AFP she felt “much more at ease” and hoped businesses that had closed ahead of the storm would reopen soon.
The storms have raised concerns over the impact of heavy rainfall, flooding and dangerous coastal conditions on communities along Mexico’s Pacific coast.
The report also linked the intensity of the hurricane season in the region to the El Niño phenomenon, which is associated with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
