Mexico: At least two dead after the weakening Hurricane Roslin passed

Tropical Storm Roslin, which made landfall in northwest Mexico as a Category 3 hurricane on Sunday, killed at least two people, destroying homes and destroying roads, before likely disappearing by evening.

“We found that someone died in Rosamorada,” Jorge Benito Rodriguez, Nayarit’s state security minister, told state television.

The Fire and Citizen Protection Department later said an 80-year-old man died when a heavy structure collapsed in his home on Mixcaltitan Island.

As of 12:00 a.m. Monday, Roslin was 95 km from the northern city of Torreon, with sustained winds of 55 km/h. It should dissipate in the evening, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in the United States.

Roslin strengthened within hours on Friday into a Category 4 hurricane, putting authorities and residents in Nayarit and Jalisco states on high alert.

A hurricane greater than 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale (out of 5) is considered a potentially catastrophic “major” phenomenon. It was the first hurricane to reach this strength in the Pacific Ocean this season.

He made landfall around 7:20 am near Santa Cruz (Nayarit state), where 1,200 people live, subsisting mainly from fishing and farming.

And civil protection authorities in the states of Nayarit and Jalisco (west), which were most affected by the cyclone, reported material damage, some floods, falling trees and landslides.

The director of civil protection in Nayarit, Pedro Nunez, noted that the floods “do not represent a danger in themselves.”

The resort of Puerto Vallarta (state of Jalisco), with a population of about 220 thousand, one of the largest cities in the hurricane-affected area, began to determine the damage.

evacuation

“It was a bit scary. Water started to enter our house, and we had to take our children out and put them on higher ground (…) We stayed in the rain for about three hours, and my house was destroyed,” said Eric Newcomer, an American who has been living in Puerto Vallarta for three months. .

In Sayulita, Nayarit, some areas were affected by a stream flood that buried homes.

More than a thousand residents of vulnerable areas left their homes to join shelters or relatives’ homes, while commercial activities were suspended at the end of the afternoon.

Tropical cyclones strike Mexico every year on its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November.

At the end of May, Agatha, the first storm of the season in the Pacific Ocean, hit the coasts of the state of Oaxaca (south), where torrential rains in mountain towns killed 11 people. In October 1997, the 4th-ranked Paulina devastated the coast of Mexico in the South Pacific Ocean, killing more than 200 people.