Veracruz, Mexico – Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico’s gulf coast before quickly weakening to a tropical storm Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation’s busiest ports and unleashing rains in Central America and Mexico that have killed at least 59 people.
The storm, which whipped up 80-mph winds, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a busy port 185 miles east of Mexico City.
The storm’s outer bands swiped the city, knocking down trees and flooding low-lying neighborhoods, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
All three of Mexico’s gulf coast crude-oil loading ports were closed Tuesday as a precaution, but the shutdowns hadn’t affected the company’s production, authorities said.
Shortly after Stan touched land about midday, the storm’s winds dropped to about 65 mph, although heavy rains remained a threat, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The storm was moving toward the southwest at about 9 mph and was expected to continue weakening. Tropical-storm winds extended outward up to 105 miles from Stan’s center.
Forecasters said the storm was driving rain across Central America and southern Mexico, provoking flooding and landslides. At least 41 people were killed in El Salvador, the majority in landslides on Tuesday, and nine people, including six migrants believed to have died in a boat wreck, died in Nicaragua.
The bodies of six foreigners were found Monday on a small Nicaraguan island in the Pacific, civil defense official Maj. Porfirio Castrillo said. None was carrying identification, but they were all believed to be Ecuadorean migrants killed when the bad weather caused their boat to run ashore, he said.
Severe flooding was reported in the Nicaraguan provinces of Leon, Granada, Matagalpa and Managua, causing three deaths. Four deaths were reported in Honduras and three in Guatemala.
