By Cassandra Garrison
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Two people died on Sunday from destruction caused by Storm Roslyn near Mexico’s Pacific coast, authorities said, and heavy rains and flash flooding continued even as the storm weakened while moving inland.
A 74-year-old man was killed in the town of Mexcaltitan de Santiago Ixcuintla when a beam fell on his head, Nayarit state’s Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection told Reuters. A 39-year-old woman also died when a fence collapsed in the state’s Rosamorada district.
Roslyn hit land as a powerful Category 3 hurricane at 5:20 a.m. local time (1120 GMT) near Santa Cruz in northern Nayarit, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, a Pacific coastal state home to popular tourist beaches like Sayulita and Punta Mita.
By midday, however, Roslyn was downgraded to a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds that decreased to near 70 miles per hour (110 km per hour) with stronger gusts. More rapid weakening was expected as the storm moved across west-central Mexico, the NHC said.
Roslyn was forecast to become a tropical depression by Sunday evening and dissipate overnight or early Monday.
Images from Nayarit after Roslyn made landfall showed cars submerged in water and homes with major damage to roofs and outdoor coverings. Emergency officials were dispatched to the most affected areas, the state’s civil security agency said on Twitter.
Only minor damage was reported in neighboring Jalisco, according to the state’s governor. The busy international Puerto Vallarta airport resumed all operations.
Some people who evacuated had returned to their homes. Officials were working to restore power in areas that experienced outages.
Beaches along the coast remained closed. The NHC warned of swells that were “likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.”
Heavy rainfall and flooding were expected to continue in some areas of the storm’s path, the NHC said. Up to 10 inches (25 cm) of rain was expected on the upper coast of Jalisco and Nayarit. Southeastern Sinaloa and southern Durango into southwestern Zacatecas could see as much as 8 inches of rain.
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(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Lisa Shumaker and Diane Craft)
