LOS CABOS, Mexico — Hurricane Jimena brushed passed the resort towns at the southern tip of the Baja California, lashing them with driving rain and winds as its fierce core bore down on a stretch of desert coastline to the north.
Despite the pummeling by the fringes of the hurricane, the Mexican peninsula’s biggest resort, Los Cabos, appeared to be escaping major damage beyond power outages and mud-choked roads.
Early today Jimena was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane.
Dozens of people evacuated from the Los Congrejos shantytown huddled in darkened rooms at a school after electricity failed during the storm. Trying to calm squalling babies and ignore hunger from having little food, the evacuees waited for dawn, and a chance to look at what the hurricane did to their homes made of plastic sheeting, wood and tar paper.
“Instead of giving out a few sheets of roofing every year, they should give us materials to build real houses — wood, or even bricks,” said Paulino Hernandez, an out-of-work mason who sought haven at the school. “Every year it’s the same thing: They (officials) give out a few sheets of roofing, and the next year it has to be replaced” when a hurricane comes.
Authorities reported no injuries or major damages in Los Cabos, but expressed concern about what might happen when the hurricane made landfall farther up the coast.
“It could be ugly at Bahia Magdalena,” state Interior Secretary Luis Armanado Diaz said, referring to a sparsely populated bay with a smattering of fishing villages to the north.
Diaz said the hurricane might actually help alleviate the state’s drought. “If it continues like this, and there is not a major impact, it will help more than it will hurt,” he said.
Officials in Baja California Sur state prepared shelters to hold up to 29,000 people as Jimena churned northward with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph.
The government declared a state of emergency for Los Cabos and the state capital of La Paz as the storm approached. Schools, many ports and most businesses closed. Rescue workers from the Red Cross and the Mexican military prepared for post-hurricane disaster relief, and two Mexican army Hercules cargo planes flew in medical supplies.
Jimena’s core was on course to pass near or over southern Baja California today and the central part of the peninsula late today or early Thursday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Service.
While its center was missing the peninsula’s resort-studded southern tip, its outer fringes were lashing the resorts, kicking up huge waves and flooding streets.
Residents and tourists gathered Tuesday to watch huge waves batter the shore near Cabo San Lucas, as the wind whipped up sand and salt spray.
Forecasters predicted the hurricane would drop 5 to 10 inches of rain in Baja, and dry stream beds already were gushing torrents.
Most tourists had left by Tuesday, leaving 75 percent of hotel rooms vacant. Some of those who stayed came out to marvel at the storm, fighting the winds and rain at the shore.
