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MEXICO CITY-Mexican authorities worked on the issue of Hurricane Willa, and the Pacific coast.
Willa, which made landfall late Tuesday as a Category 3 hurricane about 50 miles southeast of the port of Mazatlan, quickly weakened as it moved across Mexico's mountainous terrain and dissipated Wednesday.
The storm, with winds up to 120 mph, knocked out electrical power, damaged roads and highways and caused several rivers to flood their banks, but there were no reports of deaths.
Quirino Ordaz, the governor of Sinaloa state, said there was a significant amount of material damage in Escuinapa municipality, where the center of the storm hit.
A resident worked on a tree in Escuinapa on Wednesday,
Photo:
Marco Ugarte / Associated Press
"There are a lot of posts knocked down and fallen trees, there's no electricity or drinking water service," he told the Televisa Network early Wednesday.
The full extent of the damage is still to be assessed, but "the worst is over," he said. "The important thing is that there is no loss of human life."
He said more than 4,000 people had moved into shelters ahead of the storm, and he expected to be restored Wednesday.
Luis Felipe Puente, the national head of civil protection, said several rivers had flooded their banks in Sinaloa and neighboring Nayarit, prompting evacuations of people living in those areas.
Army personnel working in the field of clearing trees by removing trees, mud and other debris.
The state electric utility CFE said damage to power infrastructure left 96,200 customers without electricity in the states of Sinaloa, Nayarit, Durango and Michoacán.
The CFE said early this week it had more than 2,000 workers ready to respond to power outages in that country could be affected by Willa. The utility moved hundreds of skies, trucks and emergency power plants into the region.
Despite a busy Pacific storm season, Willa was the first major hurricane to make landfall in Mexico this year.
In September, a tropical depression that formed in the Gulf of California caused widespread flooding in the northern part of Sinaloa. Tropical storm Vicente, which moved along Mexico's coast before moving inland Tuesday as a depression, caused flooding in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán.
Eleven people were reported killed in flooding in Oaxaca in recent days.
Write to Anthony Harrup at [email protected]
