Hurricane Willa hits the Pacific coast of Mexico

The storm is expected to subside rapidly on mountainous terrain and dissipate on Wednesday over northern Mexico, the hurricane center said. 19659004] In anticipation of the arrival of the storm, schools are closed since Monday, shelters have been installed and emergency response teams have been prepared.

Luis Felipe Puente, national civil protection officer, said Tuesday afternoon that more than 4,250 people living in vulnerable areas had been evacuated to shelters or homes of friends and relatives. He recommended businesses and tourist activities to close in the early afternoon and warned citizens against the rushed purchase of food or gasoline last minute.

"The best thing people can do is stay here tonight," he said. Nayarit and Sinaloa should weather the storm, officials said, but other states, including Jalisco, would feel the impact. According to the authorities, there are about 40,000 foreign and domestic tourists in these states, which are home to the resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán.

The storm, which reached category 5 on Monday, spent Tuesday earlier on the Marias Islands, an archipelago of four islands that include a nature reserve and federal prison.

million. Puente said the islands had suffered minor damage to the infrastructure but without causing casualties.

The authorities of the states of Nayarit, Sinaloa and Jalisco closed the schools from Monday in some municipalities and began to set up shelters. The Ministry of the Interior has declared emergency status to 12 municipalities in Nayarit and seven in Sinaloa, thus giving them access to emergency funds.

Thousands of members of the army and navy, as well as the federal police, were present in the states of Colima. Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa. The government closed the region's ports and canceled several flights to Mazatlan and Tepic, the capital of Nayarit state.

The CFE public electricity utility announced that more than 2,000 workers were ready to deal with power outages in Nayarit, Sinaloa and others could be affected by the storm. The utility has moved hundreds of cranes, trucks and emergency power plants to the area.

A separate meteorological event that threatened Mexico, tropical storm Vicente, went off overnight and its remains were moved inland from above the state from Michoacán. M. According to Mr. Puente, 11 people were reportedly killed in recent days in the state of Oaxaca, in the south of the country, where floods caused by Vicente and other weather events have damaged people. houses and roads. The states of Guerrero and Michoacán have also been affected by floods and landslides, but no human casualties have been reported, he added.

In September, a tropical depression in the Gulf of California caused many floods in the northern part of the country. from Sinaloa.

Writing to Anthony Harrup at [email protected]