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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2006 
Mexican Resort Digs Out After Storm
 Tomas Sarmiento - Reuters
| | Palm trees buckle under strong winds as Hurricane Lane approaches Mexico's state of Sinaloa September 16, 2006. (Daniel Aguilar/Reuters) |
Mazatlan, Mexico - Residents hauled bags of mud out of their homes and tourists tried to resume their vacations yesterday after hurricane Lane battered this popular resort town.
A day after the Category 3 storm swept away cars, toppled trees and crumpled billboards, some tourists sat in Jacuzzis and pools under a light drizzle or walked in ankle-deep water to shops and restaurants, which opened their previously boarded-up doors.
Others, however, were trying desperately to get out of the mud-covered resort.
Robert Brown, 44, who builds race car engines in Aberdeen, Missouri, said he and his wife were considering taking a seven-hour bus ride to Puerto Vallarta to catch a flight home after he was told planes out of Mazatlan were full yesterday.
"I don't really know what to do now," he said. "We don't know how the roads will be, but we also don't know how else we'll get out."
Noe Tobar, 23, who was sweeping palm fronds and water out of the hallway of his concrete floor house in Mazatlan, said the cleanup from the storm should be quick. "We were hit with a lot of rain, but give us a few days and everything will be back to normal," he said.
Nearby, Martin Garcia, a 19-year-old musician, was hauling plastic bags full of mud out of his cement hovel, which he shares with seven others.
He said the floodwaters had risen to the edges of his family's beds.
"I'm glad it went farther north, but even so, it left us flooded," he said.
The storm weakened to a tropical depression yesterday after pounding Mazatlan with heavy winds and rain.
It prompted the cancellation of flights and Mexico's traditional Independence Day parade in the resort and retirement community popular with Americans.
The region escaped relatively unscathed with no reports of major damage or deaths, said Gerardo Delgado, a Red Cross spokesman in Sinaloa state, where Mazatlan is located.
A handful of small mountain villages were cut off by floodwaters but officials flew over the area in a helicopter and said there appeared to be no major damage or injuries, Delgado added.
About 3,000 people had been evacuated in the state, but most returned home by yesterday.
By yesterday morning, Lane's maximum sustained winds had faded to about 50 kmh, down from about 200 kmh on Saturday, said forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Centre in Miami. The storm was expected to die out as it moved further inland, the centre said.
Earlier this week, rains from the storm lashed coastal towns to the south, causing a landslide that killed a seven-year-old boy in Acapulco and flooding across western Mexico that forced hundreds of people to abandon their homes.
It was the second hurricane to strike the region this month. Hurricane John earlier hit a remote section of Baja California, killing five people and destroying 160 homes. |
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