Associated Press
Hurricane Patricia headed toward
southwestern Mexico Friday as a monster Category 5 storm, the strongest
ever in the Western Hemisphere that forecasters said could make a
“potentially catastrophic landfall” later in the day.
Residents of
a stretch of Mexico's Pacific Coast dotted with resorts and fishing
villages on Thursday boarded up homes and bought supplies ahead of
Patricia's arrival.
With maximum sustained winds near 200 mph, Patricia is the
strongest storm ever recorded in the eastern Pacific or in the Atlantic,
said Dave Roberts, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. National
Hurricane Center.
Patricia's power was comparable to that of
Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 dead or missing in the
Philippines two years ago, according to the U.N.’s World Meteorological
Organization.
In Mexico, officials declared a state of emergency in
dozens of municipalities in Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco states that
contain the bustling port of Manzanillo and the posh resort of Puerto
Vallarta. The governor of Colima ordered schools closed on Friday, when
the storm was forecast to make what the Hurricane Center called a
“potentially catastrophic landfall.”
According
to the 2010 census, there were more than 7.3 million inhabitants in
Jalisco state and more than 255,000 in Puerto Vallarta municipality.
There were more than 650,000 in Colima state, and more than 161,000 in
Manzanillo.
Rain pounded Manzanillo late Thursday while people
took last-minute measures ahead of Patricia, which quickly grew from a
tropical storm into a Category 5 hurricane, leaving authorities
scrambling to make people safe.
At a Wal-Mart in Manzanillo, shoppers filled carts with non-perishables as a steady rain fell outside.
Veronica
Cabrera, shopping with her young son, said Manzanillo tends to flood
with many small streams overflowing their banks. She said she had taped
her windows at home to prevent them from shattering.
Alejandra
Rodriguez, shopping with her brother and mother, was buying 10 liters of
milk, a large jug of water and items like tuna and canned ham that do
not require refrigeration or cooking. The family already blocked the
bottoms of the doors at their home to keep water from entering.
Manzanillo's “main street really floods and cuts access to a lot of other streets. It ends up like an island,” Rodriguez said.
In
Puerto Vallarta, restaurants and stores taped or boarded-up windows,
and residents raced to stores for last-minute purchases ahead of the
storm.
The Hurricane Center in Miami warned that preparations
should be rushed to completion, saying the storm could cause coastal
flooding, destructive waves and flash floods.
“This is an extremely dangerous, potentially catastrophic hurricane,” center meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said.
Feltgen
said Patricia also poses problems for Texas. Forecast models indicate
that after the storm breaks up over land, remnants of its tropical
moisture will likely combine with and contribute to heavy rainfall that
is already soaking Texas independently of the hurricane, he said.
“It's only going to make a bad situation worse,” he said.
In Colima, authorities handed out sandbags to help residents protect their homes from flooding.
By
early Friday, Patricia's maximum sustained winds had increased to 200
mph — a Category 5 storm, the highest designation on the Saffir-Simpson
scale used to quantify a hurricane's wind strength.
Patricia was
centered about 145 miles southwest of the Pacific resort of Manzanillo
early Friday and was moving northwest at 12 mph on a projected track to
come ashore between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta sometime Friday
afternoon or evening.
Some fluctuations in intensity were forecast
before then, but the Hurricane Center said it was expected to be an
“extremely dangerous” Category 5 storm when it made landfall.
A
hurricane warning was in effect for the Mexican coast from San Blas to
Punta San Telmo, a stretch that includes Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta.
A broader area was under hurricane watch, tropical storm warning or
tropical storm watch.
The Hurricane Center said Patricia was
expected to bring rainfall of 6 to 12 inches, with isolated amounts of
up to 20 inches in some locations. Tropical storm conditions were
expected to reach land late Thursday or early Friday, complicating any
remaining preparation work at that point.
“We are calm,” said
Gabriel Lopez, a worker at Las Hadas Hotel in Manzanillo. “We don't know
what direction (the storm) will take, but apparently it's headed this
way. … If there is an emergency we will take care of the people. There
are rooms that are not exposed to wind or glass.”
LATimes
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