Floods fear as hurricane drenches mountains

A sprawling Hurricane Dean slammed into Mexico for the second time in as many days and quickly stretched across to the Pacific Ocean, drenching the central mountains with rain that swelled rivers before weakening into a tropical storm.

Coming ashore with top sustained winds of 100mph, Dean’s centre hit the tourism and fishing town of Tecolutla shortly after civil defence workers loaded the last evacuees on to army trucks and headed to inland shelters.

There was no escaping the wide storm’s hurricane-force winds, which lashed at a 60-mile stretch of the coast in Veracruz state.

“You can practically feel the winds, they’re so strong,” Maria del Pilar Garcia said by telephone from inside the hotel she manages in Tuxpan, a town 40 miles north of where Dean made landfall.

Last night, Dean was located 75 miles north of Mexico City, where it generated steady rain, and was moving west at 17 mph. The US Hurricane Centre predicted it would dissipate today over the mountains of central Mexico.

Mexico had suspended offshore oil production and shut down its only nuclear power plant as tens of thousands headed for higher ground. The state oil company said there was no known damage to any of its production facilities on shore or in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dean struck land yesterday as a Category 2 storm after regaining some of the force it unleashed on the Yucatan. Its first strike on the peninsula on Tuesday as a Category 5 tempest with 165 mph winds was the third most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall.

Officials said there were no reports of deaths in Mexico directly caused by Dean, which killed 20 people in its earlier sweep through the Caribbean. The toll rose when Haitian officials said seven more storm deaths had been reported in remote areas.

Dean’s sustained winds dropped to 85 mph, Category 1, shortly after making landfall in late morning, and it quickly weakened into a tropical storm with winds of 45 mph as of the early evening.

The biggest worry was rain. Up to 20 inches of rainfall were expected to swell rivers and soak mountains in a region prone to mudslides and flash floods.

“The water is rising. It’s entering the houses now. The children are very frightened,” said Maria Luisa Cervantes, who fled her low-lying home with her five children to a shelter in Poza Rica after a flying sheet of metal snapped power cables on to her roof.

The mountain ranges that parallel Mexico’s coast are dotted with villages connected by precarious roads and susceptible to disaster. A rainstorm in 1999 caused floods that killed at least 350 people, destroyed tens of thousands of houses and damaged the pre-Hispanic ruins at Tajin.