September 24, 2024
PUERTO ESCONDIDO, Mexico (AP) — Two people are dead after former Hurricane John barreled into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.
John grew into a major hurricane in a matter of hours Monday and made landfall about 80 miles east of the resort of Acapulco before declining to a tropical storm after moving inland.
John came ashore near the town of Punta Maldonado late Monday night as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. It weakened back to tropical storm status early Tuesday with maximum sustained wind speeds of 40 mph and was expected to weaken rapidly.
Evelyn Salgado, the governor of the coastal state of Guerrero, said two people died when the storm sent a mudslide crashing into their house on the remote mountain of Tlacoachistlahuaca, further from the coast.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned that the storm’s slow pace and heavy rains could cause potentially catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides in some Mexican states.
“Seek higher ground, protect yourselves and do not forget that life is the most important thing; material things can be replaced. We are here,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote on the social media platform X.
Lincer Casiano Clemente, the mayor of the town of Marquelia, near where the hurricane hit on the coast, said early Tuesday that “there are a lot of houses, mainly the ones with sheet roofing, where the force of the air blew off the roofing.”
The mayor said no deaths or injuries had been reported in Marquelia so far, something he attributed to his ability to warn residents of the storm's approach. But power was knocked out along large parts of the coast, and highways were blocked by fallen trees. The government said some 60,000 people remained without power.
“We've never seen such strong gusts,” the mayor said. By Tuesday morning, people were out looking for food, he said.
The hurricane center said heavy rainfall over coastal southwest Mexico through the week was likely to cause “significant and possible catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides” in parts of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero states.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum said her government planned to work on improving an early alert system, similar to what the country has with earthquakes.
