Nora leaves child dead and devastated Mexico after pouring torrential rains

By Alfonso Lepe

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico, Aug.29 (Reuters) – Nora hit the west coast of Mexico as a hurricane, in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, with torrential rains and gusts of wind that killed a child as well as multiple damage in several states, including some tourist ports.

The Nora center, which was decommissioned as a tropical storm on Sunday, made landfall on Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale near the municipality of Tomatlán, in the state of Jalisco, and since then it has continued its movement along the coastline.

Rains and strong winds caused flooding over the weekend, damage to stretches of road, river overflows, power outages and tree felling in the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero , Colima, Nayarit and Sinaloa, according to civil protection officials and social media posts.

In those states, where shelters have been activated and preventive evacuations have been carried out in dozens of communities, are popular resorts such as Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Mazatlán and Acapulco.

A hotel partially collapsed due to flooding in the streets of central Puerto Vallarta after a river overflowed that also shattered a bridge, damaging dozens of homes and businesses in the area, said a Reuters witness.

Inside the collapsed building, a miner of Spanish descent was trapped, whose body was rescued by rescuers, Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro said on Twitter, who also reported that a missing woman remained. In the harbour. According to local media, the boy was 13 years old.

“To his family, who came to our port from Spain 7 years ago, and to his loved ones, all our support and our deepest condolences,” said Alfaro.

According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Nora was located at 9:00 p.m. GMT 165 kilometers (km) northwest of Mazatlán, Sinaloa state, blowing maximum sustained winds of 95 kilometers per hour (km / h ) while moving north-northwest at 19 km / h.

Storm movement is expected to slow northwest through Tuesday and Nora will continue to move parallel to the west coast. It will also continue to pour heavy rainfall over coastal states, although a gradual weakening is also expected.

The National Water Commission of Mexico (Conagua) said in a statement that torrential rains were expected for the next few hours in Nayarit and Sinaloa, and heavy rains in the regions of Baja California Sur, Durango, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán and Sonora.

Hurricane Grace killed eight people last week after striking as a powerful Category 3 cyclone in Veracruz state in the Gulf of Mexico.

(Report by Miguel Angel Gutiérrez and Stefanie Eschenbacheren in Mexico City)