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POZA RICA - Hurricane Dean ripped into Mexico's Gulf coast yesterday with screaming winds and torrential rain that flooded towns and forced thousands into shelters, but then weakened rapidly after moving onshore.
Large trees felled by winds blocked main roads in the oil town of Poza Rica as Dean, packing blasts of up to 160km/h, made landfall in Mexico for the second time.
"It's spectacular, it's very powerful," said hotel manager Felipe Torres near where the centre of the storm hit land. No one was reported dead from Dean's two-day rampage in Mexico despite howling winds that earlier put it in the fiercest Category 5 level of hurricanes.
But it proved deadly on its way to Mexico. Haiti increased its death toll to nine, taking the total number killed in Haiti, Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean region to 17.
Dean finally weakened to a tropical storm yesterday afternoon and was not expected to threaten the US.
It lost strength soon after landing near Poza Rica but its rains fell in Mexico City more than 200km away.
The US National Hurricane Centre said it would fizzle out overnight.
But the state government of Veracruz warned of heavy rains which often cause mudslides.
Dean pounded Mayan villages and beach resorts in a run across the Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday and then passed through the Campeche Sound where the vast majority of Mexico's crude oil for export to the United States is produced.
Mexico's state oil monopoly, Pemex, said production, 80 per cent of which was cut due to the storm, would begin to return to normal today.
- Reuters
