Storm brings havoc to Mexican resorts
Posted: 04 September 2009 0244 hrs

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PUERTO SAN CARLOS, Mexico: Tropical Storm Jimena battered Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Thursday with torrential rain and powerful winds, cutting off villages, destroying homes and leaving one person missing.

Downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall as a hurricane, Jimena had top winds of 95 kilometres per hour as it moved north, US forecasters said.

Jimena was forecast to weaken to a tropical depression by late Thursday.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned that the storm's rains "could produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides" but high tides and large battering waves were also expected to subside.

Baja California Sur civil protection chief Jose Gajon told AFP a fisherman had been missing since late Tuesday from San Buto, possibly becoming Jimena's first victim.

"We are still unsure whether he was carried away by a torrent or if he was in the ocean," Gajon said.

In a sign of a gradual return to normal life, shops began to reopen in Los Cabos resort, while some residents and tourists were seen strolling through the streets.

Two of the three international airports in Baja California Sur also reopened, state officials said.

In Puerto San Carlos, residents had ignored evacuation orders to try and hold onto their scant possessions, but rushed to local schools serving as makeshift shelters as the eye of the storm passed above them.

The fishing village was hit by heavy rain and roaring winds that destroyed dozens of houses, caused power and telecommunications outages and floods and felled trees, poles and billboards.

Streets turned to mud as bowed lamp posts dangled over rain-lashed roads littered with trees hurled around by Jimena's mighty gusts that also sank five shrimp and tuna boats anchored at the port.

Villagers who defied pleas to seek refuge, picked through their soaked belongings in roofless homes.

"Seventy-five percent of homes have been affected," said town delegate Humberto Arias.

Jimena was predicted to bring up to 38 centimetres total rain accumulation in some areas, and some eight to 13 centimetres additional rain over the central portion of the peninsula and parts of western Mexico in the coming days.

Paola Torres, 21, endured a night of terror with her husband and two small children as the storm bore down on their home, cutting electricity, phone lines and water supplies.

"We tried to hide in the bathroom, but the wind tore off the wooden door," she told AFP.

Luxury tourist resorts on the southern tip of the peninsula around Los Cabos were spared a direct hit from the most powerful hurricane so far this year, and most foreigners departed before Jimena struck.

Having missed the southern resorts and La Paz, Jimena moved northward along Baja California's east coast. It was forecast to move inland over the peninsula late Thursday.

While over 15,000 families were evacuated from high-risk zones and thousands of tourists had deserted the resorts in recent days, villagers and slum dwellers further north on the largely arid, mountainous spit of land had no choice but to tough it out.

The Mariner of the Seas cruise ship - the second-largest in the world - cancelled a scheduled stop at the upscale Los Cabos resort destination with some 5,000 passengers aboard.

In Los Cabos, hotels felt the pinch after a major international tax conference organised by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had to be moved to Mexico City because of the storm.

An estimated 2,000 tourists, many of them American, fled the resort strip as Jimena approached and the beaches, ports and the airport were all closed to the public on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Erika, which formed in the Atlantic on Tuesday, was expected to gradually weaken as it heads toward the Leeward islands early Thursday and later approach the US and British Virgin Islands as well as Puerto Rico. - AFP/de