Hurricane Willa lashes Pacific coast, weakens to storm

ESCUINAPA: Hurricane Willa crashed ashore in western Mexico yesterday, lashing the Pacific coast with powerful winds and heavy rain before weakening to a tropical storm as it moved inland.

The powerful storm, which was a maximum Category 5 hurricane on Monday, had weakened to Category 3 as it moved toward land.

Forecasters warned that the storm still had the potential to unleash deadly flooding and landslides.

However, storm surge levels would subside over the course of yesterday and Willa was expected to dissipate by the afternoon, the United States National Hurricane Centre said.

Willa first swept over the Marias islands, where Mexico has a federal prison.

The interior ministry did not respond to questions on whether it had evacuated the 1,000 inmates housed there or what other emergency measures were in place for the penal colony.

“We do not have any reports of damages there so far,” the head of Mexico’s emergency services, Luis Felipe Puente, said.

More than 4,250 people were evacuated from high-risk areas, including tourists who were on vacation at the beach, he said.

They are being housed in 58 temporary shelters.

At a shelter in Escuinapa, a town of 30,000 people that sits in the middle of the storm’s likely path, residents fretted over their houses as they waited out the storm.