Dean swells rivers as it drenches Mexico

Hurricane Dean limped across Mexico today as a weakened tropical depression, but still dumped torrential rains that flooded rivers and drenched mudslide-prone mountains.

The once-catastrophic Category 5 hurricane was nothing more than a tropical depression today, but with 20 inches of rain expected to fall, flooding was widespread and mudslides a real possibility in isolated communities.

And the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami was keeping close watch to see whether Dean would re-form over the Pacific Ocean.

“We’re going to monitor it during the day,” said Richard Pasch, senior hurricane specialist in Miami. “Perhaps it’s emerging into the Pacific. The mountains are very high so they removed the lower part of the circulation of Dean. We’re not sure how much has survived.”

Mexican officials today confirmed four deaths after Dean’s second landfall.

In Veracruz state, one man drowned trying to cross a swollen river and another was crushed to death by a rain-soaked wall; In neighbouring Hidalgo state,

A woman and her 14-year-old son were killed when their shack collapsed on them in a mountain village. Haiti also confirmed another death, bringing the total toll to 25.

The mountain ranges near Mexico’s Gulf and Pacific Coasts are are dotted with villages connected by precarious roads and susceptible to disaster.

A rainstorm in 1999 caused floods in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz that killed at least 350 people. Already, several rivers have been overflowing.

Dean carved a path through the Mayan jungles of the lower Yucatan peninsula, hit the Gulf of Mexico and then hit Mexico’s mainland at midday yesterday with top sustained winds of 100mph at the Veracruz tourism and fishing town of Tecolutla. Hurricane-force winds lashed at a 60-mile stretch of the coast.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of damage across the state,” Veracruz Gov Fidel Herrera told the Televisa television network Thursday. In the vanilla-harvest heartland of Papantla, “a huge number of roofs were ripped off houses,” he said.

In Poza Rica, just inland from Tecolutla, hundreds awoke in government shelters today and went to work. Exhausted neighbours banded together to clear the streets of fallen trees with axes and machetes as the government began reconnecting downed power lines. Many remained without electricity in Veracruz, but in the Yucatan Peninsula, officials said most power was restored.

The tin roof was ripped completely off the house of Maria Patricia Perez, a 40-year-old merchant in Poza Rica. “We were afraid it would knock down everything,” she said.

Shopkeeper Joel Cruz’s house was left without electricity or telephone lines after a giant pine tree gave way, but it could have been worse. Amid the howling winds, his neighbours helped him tie ropes around the tree and they were able to direct its fall away from his home. They also managed to move two cars away just before the tree came crashing down.

“It was an adventure we survived,” the 30-year-old Cruz said.

The same sentiment – it could have been much worse – was shared around the region where Dean’s most damaging winds came onto the Mexican mainland.

“A lot of homes were left without roofs,” said Mariano Gutierrez, head of Civil Defence in Poza Rica. “Many trees fell on public streets and on houses. There are many fallen signs. But so far, thank God, we don’t have anything serious.”

Dean hit the mainland 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 165mph winds was the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever to make landfall.

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.

Producers of corn and sugar cane likely suffered heavy losses in Veracruz, a key agricultural state. Coffee plantations at higher elevations also were threatened by the heavy rains, industry officials said.

Dean’s most powerful winds were relatively narrow and appeared to hit just one town: Majahual, known to passengers of Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise ships as the Costa Maya stop on their Caribbean cruises.

Most people fled Majahual ahead of the storm, which demolished hundreds of houses, crumpled steel girders, splintered wooden structures and washed away huge sections of the concrete dock.

Carnival Cruises said the port’s future as a cruise destination is uncertain.