According to the local government, Hurricane Agatha was downgraded Tuesday from a tropical storm and left at least 11 people dead and 33 others missing along the southern coasts of Oaxaca, Mexico. They were victims of heavy rains that came in consecutive days. An earlier report had reported that there were ten deaths and twenty missing.
The governor stated that Agatha’s landfall was a success. However, heavy rains on Tuesday caused rivers to burst and landslides. Alejandro Mura, Oaxaca.
The hurricane, which was the first of the season’s hurricanes, struck the Pacific coast of Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane according to the Saffir-Simpson scale. It made landfall west of Puerto Angel (a coastal community of approximately 2,500 people in the state Oaxaca), on Monday afternoon.
The United States National Hurricane Center (NHC), Monday said that it was the “strongest hurricane” to be recorded along the Pacific coast of Mexico since 1949.
Agatha moved on Tuesday towards Veracruz (east), the state that borders the Gulf of Mexico. This caused torrential rains to hit the region and the southern part of the country. According to local authorities, 5,240 tourists were identified in the zone of risk, located between Puerto Escondido (east) and Huatulco (west).
Mexico is often hit by tropical storms along its Atlantic and Pacific coasts every year. Usually, it happens between May and November.
