Tropical Storm Manuel blasted Mexico’s Pacific coast on Sunday, while Hurricane Ingrid crept toward eastern states yesterday, triggering rain, landslides and floods that killed at least 21 people.
Thousands of people were evacuated as the two storms flanked Mexico on the Pacific and Gulf coasts, causing rivers to overflow, flooding streets and damaging bridges.
The country was facing an “atypical and unusual” situation as it has never before been hit by a hurricane 24 hours after a tropical storm made landfall, Mexican National Weather Service coordinator Juan Manuel Caballero told a news conference.
Photo: EPA
Ingrid made landfall yesterday on the east coast, but had weakened to a tropical storm.
State-run energy firm Pemex evacuated three oil platforms off the Gulf coast of Tamaulipas State and shut down 24 wells.
On the Pacific side, Manuel weakened into a tropical depression late on Sunday, hours after making landfall near Manzanillo, Colima State, the US National Hurricane Center said.
MORE FLOODING
However, the weather system was still producing heavy rainfall that was likely to trigger more floods and mudslides, the Miami-based center said.
At least 11 of the 21 deaths were in the Pacific resort of Acapulco, where water rose as high as 1m in some neighborhoods, dragging cars away.
About 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the state, while more than 20,000 households lost power.
DEATH TOLL
“For the moment, there are officially 21 people dead,” national civil protection director Luis Felipe Puente told a news conference.
In Acapulco, five people died when a wall collapsed and six members of the same family were killed when a landslide crushed their home, Puente and local civil protection and Red Cross officials said.
A woman was killed by a landslide elsewhere in Guerrero, while a man and a child died in a landslide in the state capital, Chilpancingo, Puente said.
Guerrero state civil protection official Constantino Gonzales Vargas said that six people died in a road accident due to slippery conditions, but Puente did not report these fatalities.
In Hidalgo State, a nurse and her driver drowned when their car was swept away by an overflowing river, civil protection officials there said.
Another woman in the state died in a landslide.
Three people, including a 16-year-old boy, were killed in a landslide in Tlatlauquitepec, a mountain town in Puebla State.
Puente reported another storm-related death in of Oaxaca State.
As Hurricane Ingrid lumbered toward the east coast, officials canceled the independence day celebrations in several towns of Tamaulipas State.
The category one hurricane had already forced the evacuation of 6,000 people in Veracruz State after two rivers overflowed their banks.
The US National Hurricane Center said that Ingrid was about 153km northeast of Tampico, Tamaulipas.
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