Hurricane Stan spawns more storms and shuts down a busy Mexican port; El Salvador suffers the most casualties.
By Associated Press
Published October 5, 2005
VERACRUZ, Mexico - Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's gulf coast Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and spawning related storms across the region that left at least 59 people dead, the majority from landslides in El Salvador.
Stan, which whipped up maximum sustained winds of 80 mph before weakening to a tropical storm, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a major port 185 miles east of Mexico City.
The storm's outer bands swiped the city, knocking down trees and flooding low-lying neighborhoods, authorities said. State officials said four people were injured, including a child, but gave no details.
All three of Mexico's gulf coast crude-oil loading ports were closed Tuesday as a precaution, authorities said, but the shutdowns were not expected to affect oil prices.
Meteorologists said Stan was driving separate storms across Central America and southern Mexico, provoking flooding and landslides. At least 41 people were killed in El Salvador, the majority in landslides Monday. Nine people died in Nicaragua, including six people believed to be Ecuadorean migrants killed when their boat ran ashore.
Four deaths were reported in Honduras and three in Guatemala. In Costa Rica, a 36-year-old woman was killed when her home was buried by a landslide early Tuesday.
In Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, a river overflowed its banks and roared through the city of Tapachula, carrying away ramshackle homes of wood and metal.
Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar said four people were missing and could have been swept away. He said 600 families had been evacuated from homes around Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. Three bridges in the area were destroyed by floodwaters.
"Sadly, we know it's going to keep raining," Salazar said.
At Chachalacas beach, 20 miles north of Veracruz, Celestino Criollo struggled amid rising winds and intermittent rains to clear equipment from his thatched-roof seafood restaurant.
Criollo said the storm's rapid approach had caught many beach dwellers by surprise. "We knew it would be strong and the tide high, but we didn't think it would come this quick," he said.
