Tropical Storm Roslyn, which made landfall in northwestern Mexico on Sunday (October 23rd) as a Category 3 hurricane, killed at least two people and damaged homes and destroyed roads, before likely disappearing in the evening.
“We found that one person died in RosamoradaNayarit state security secretary Jorge Benito Rodriguez told state television. The Citizen Protection and Fire Department later said an 80-year-old man died when a heavy structure collapsed in his home on the island of Mexcaltitán.
“Major” phenomenon
As of 2 a.m. Monday, Roslyn 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. Roslyn had strengthened within hours on Friday into a Category 4 hurricane, putting authorities and residents in the states of Nayarit and Jalisco on high alert.
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A hurricane with a category greater than 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale (out of 5) is considered a “majorpotentially catastrophic. It was the first hurricane to reach this strength in the Pacific this season. It made landfall around 1:20 p.m. in the vicinity of Santa Cruz (Nayarit State), where 1,200 people live, who live mainly from fishing and agriculture.
Material damage, some flooding, falling trees and landslides were reported by the civil protection authorities of the states of Nayarit and Jalisco (West), the most affected by the hurricane. Flooding “do not represent a risk as suchsaid the Director of Civil Protection of Nayarit, Pedro Núñez. The resort of Puerto Vallarta (State of Jalisco), which has some 220,000 inhabitants and is one of the largest cities in the area affected by the hurricane, has begun to identify the damage.
Evacuations
“It was a bit scary. The water started to enter our house, we had to take our children out and put them on high ground (…) we stayed in the rain for about three hours, my house was destroyed“Told AFP Erik Newcomer, an American who has been living in Puerto Vallarta for three months. In Sayulita, Nayarit, some areas were affected by the flooding of a stream, which buried houses.
More than a thousand residents of at-risk areas left their homes to join shelters or relatives’ homes, while commercial activities were suspended at the end of the afternoon. Tropical cyclones hit Mexico every year on its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November.
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At the end of May, Agatha, the first storm of the season in the Pacific, hit the coasts of the state of Oaxaca (south), where heavy rains in mountain towns killed 11 people. In October 1997, the 4-ranked Paulina devastated Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, killing more than 200 people.