Downgraded to a tropical storm, former hurricane Emily was weakening quickly as it moved inland over north-eastern Mexico on Thursday with flood-threatening rains, after it walloped the coast with 200kph winds.
Emily, which killed 10 people in its run over the Caribbean and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula since last week, has left no casualty toll since its second landfall in Mexico early on Wednesday.
However, pounding rains drenched Tamaulipas state as well as neighbouring south Texas, where television reported that tornadoes spawned by the hurricane damaged several homes and took down power lines.
”Fortunately, up to now we’ve had no reports of deaths” or injuries, Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez told a local radio station.
Emily landed as a powerful category-three hurricane before dawn on Wednesday near the fishing village of San Fernando, 130km south of the United States border, but lost much of its punch during the day as it moved inland.
It knocked down power lines and sent signs and debris flying in sparsely inhabited coastal areas of Mexico, where 17 000 people had been evacuated to emergency shelters ahead of time.
The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned that rainfall in north-eastern Mexico could reach as much as 38cm.
”These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides,” said NHC forecaster Stacy Stewart.
In south Texas, at least 23 000 people lost electricity, according to the AEP Texas utility company.
The US Coast Guard, meanwhile, said one of its helicopter crews rescued four fishermen who had tried to ride out the storm after their 30m shrimper developed engine trouble and their anchor chain broke in heavy seas off the Texas city of Corpus Cristi.
At 3am GMT on Thursday, Tropical Storm Emily was located 110km south-southeast of Monterrey, Mexico, and moving west at 17kph.
Its wind strength was down to 85kph.
After crossing the Caribbean, Emily had slammed into Mexico’s Caribbean coast on Monday as a rare category-four hurricane, on a scale of five, after sending tens of thousands of tourists fleeing Cancun and other popular resorts.
A German man died when he was electrocuted on Sunday in the Mexican resort of Playa del Carmen as he prepared his house for the hurricane.
The storm was blamed for another nine deaths as it thundered across the Caribbean last week.
But the peninsula at the south-eastern tip of Mexico escaped comparatively lightly. Authorities estimated damage at about $25-million and said tourist facilities were hardly affected.
Emily also spared most Mexican and US oil platforms in the Gulf, many of which had been evacuated hours before the winds and surf picked up.
Emily is the second Atlantic hurricane of the year, having formed just days after Hurricane Dennis roared across the Caribbean and into Florida, leaving at least 62 dead, mostly in Haiti. — AFP
