Hurricane Roslyn weakened rapidly on Sunday after making landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast, although it left two people dead, with high winds causing landslides, flooding and property damage.
Jorge Benito Rodriguez, security secretary in the northwestern state of Nayarit, said one person died in the Rosamorada municipality.
Fire officials confirmed that an 80-year-old man died on the island of Mexcaltitan when his house collapsed.
Photo: Reuters
There were widespread reports of damage amid fears that still-rising rivers could lead to more flooding.
Hurricane Roslyn, classified at the time as a Category 3 storm, made landfall on the west coast of Mexico on Sunday, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Roslyn was later downgraded to a tropical storm when it was 95km outside the city of Torreon and moving northeast with maximum sustained winds of some 55kph.
Photo: AFP
“Weakening is expected to continue, and Roslyn is forecast to dissipate tonight,” the hurricane center said in an updated report.
Civil protection authorities in the hardest-hit states of Nayarit and Jalisco reported material damage, flooding, falling trees and landslides that blocked highways.
“We have floods, but they do not represent a risk as such, and we have not reported any loss of human life,” Nayarit Civil Protection director Pedro Nunez told local media earlier in the day.
With rain continuing, river levels were being closely monitored, he added.
“It was a bit scary,” said Erik Newcomer, an American who settled in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta three months ago.
“My house was destroyed,” he said, after evacuating his children as water entered their home.
In the village of Sayulita, in Nayarit State, landslides buried some houses. Residents waded through mud to try to salvage their possessions.
On a journey from Puerto Vallarta to the hardest hit part of Nayarit, reporters observed a mudslide that forced the closure of a highway and nearly buried a trailer.
As the storm began to pass, the Mexican government discontinued all warnings south of the coastal city of San Blas, including Puerto Vallarta.
A tropical storm warning remained in effect from San Blas north to Mazatlan.
On Saturday, Roslyn had strengthened to a major Category 4 storm as it approached Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Authorities had declared an emergency alert in the Pacific coast states of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and Sinaloa.
Tropical cyclones hit Mexico every year on its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November.
At the end of May, Agatha, the first Pacific storm of the season, hit the coast of the southern state of Oaxaca, where heavy rain in mountainous towns killed more than 10 people.
In October 1997, Hurricane Pauline struck Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 4 storm, leaving more than 200 dead.
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