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NAUTLA, Mexico - Hurricane Dean on Wednesday hit Mexico for a second time in two days, blasting the eastern state of Veracruz with strong winds and pounding rain threatening to trigger dangerous floods and mudslides.
Dean was little more than a shadow of the monster storm that roared onto Mexico's Caribbean coast on Tuesday, but authorities worried that as many as 3.5 million residents could be at risk from swelling rivers and landslides.
"What keeps us in a state of alert is the enormous amount of water," Veracruz Governor Fidel Herrera told Televisa television.
More than 10,000 people had been ordered to head to safer ground just before Dean hit shore 65 kilometres (40 miles) south-southeast of the port city of Tuxpan.
In Poza Rica, children had to be rescued at the height of the storm as winds tore off the roof of a hospital, Herrera told CNN.
Evacuation orders covered parts of Tuxpan, a transfer point for oil extracted offshore, and low-lying areas of the city of Poza Rica, which has several oil refineries.
The Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) state oil company had earlier evacuated all 18,000 personnel from its offshore oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico, causing a production drop of two million barrels day, or two thirds of the country's daily production.
In Nautla, a small community near where Dean made landfall, residents were riding the storm out in an emergency shelter set up in a sports centre.
Power was cut off as a precaution as driving rain and strong winds lashed the area.
In nearby San Rafael, many residents anticipating major flooding moved furniture to the upper floors of their homes before heading to emergency shelters.
Herrera declared a state of emergency in 89 Veracruz municipalities, saying a total of 3.5 million people were potentially at risk.
Dean hit shore with maximum sustained winds of 160 kilometres (100 miles), but rapidly weakened further as it swirled over land and was expected to fizzle out altogether as it hits mountainous areas during the night.
When it roared onto the Caribbean coast on Tuesday, Dean packed maximum sustained winds of 270 kilometres (165 miles) per hour. That made it the first Atlantic hurricane to make landfall at the topmost category five since Andrew ravaged Florida in 1992.
Despite its initial power, there were no reports of fatalities after Dean hit land in a sparsely populated area Tuesday. It then lost power as it crossed the Yucatan Peninsula and only regained a little of its punch over the Gulf of Mexico.
It flooded some areas, shattered windows, destroyed bus shelters, uprooted trees and caused power outages on its way across the peninsula. But there were none of the catastrophic damages initially feared, and the storm spared Cancun and other major tourist resorts along Mexico's Caribbean coast.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon was in the Yucatan Peninsula Wednesday to survey the damage, after expressing concern over the fate of isolated and impoverished indigenous communities along the storm's path.
Authorities in neighbouring Belize said the small Central American country did suffer some damage to buildings, but did not report any deaths.
Before it hit Mexico, Hurricane Dean was blamed for four deaths in Haiti, two in the Dominican Republic, two in Martinique and one in Jamaica. - AFP/ir
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