By Alberto Fajardo and Daniel Becerril
MANZANILLO, Mexico Oct 11 - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum urged residents along the country’s Pacific coast to remain indoors on Sunday as powerful Hurricane Simon approached Mexico’s west-central coast, threatening destructive winds, dangerous storm surges and potentially deadly flooding.
The Category 4 storm was located about 65 miles (105 km) west-northwest of the port city of Manzanillo, in Colima state, with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph (230 kph), the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest advisory at 9 a.m. local time.
The hurricane was moving north-northwest at 11 kph (7 mph), with its center about 140 km (85 miles) south-southeast of Cabo Corrientes, in neighboring Jalisco state.
“With the approaching impact of Category 4 Hurricane Simon, we urge residents of coastal municipalities in Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and Michoacan to remain sheltered until authorities officially declare that the danger has passed,” Sheinbaum said in a post on X.
She said precautionary evacuations to safer areas were continuing and urged residents to stay off the streets and follow civil protection instructions.
The NHC said Simon was expected to move very near Mexico’s west-central coast later on Sunday and remain close to the coast on Monday, although forecast uncertainty remained over whether the center would cross inland or remain just offshore. The hurricane’s eye remains offshore, but it’s tracking close to the Jalisco coast.
Even without direct landfall, dangerous storm surges, large destructive waves and damaging winds were likely along portions of Mexico’s west-central coast, the forecaster warned.
In Manzanillo, Mexico’s largest port and the main gateway for trade with Asia, residents on Saturday appeared largely calm despite the approaching storm, with little sign of panic buying at supermarkets.
Some stores had begun boarding up their windows, while businesses were closing and streets were relatively empty. Civil protection workers had closed beaches, erected barriers and raised red and black warning flags, urging residents to stay away from the shore.
Overnight and into Sunday, as Simon shifted somewhat westward off its course, it still delivered rain and winds that led to flooding in Manzanillo. The military and National Guard were deployed throughout the city.
By late Sunday morning when it seemed the worst of the storm had passed, some residents made their way through the largely empty streets to take a look at the choppy sea.
In the Alameda neighborhood, an area in the south surrounded by water, residents trudged through flooding up to their shins as members of the Mexican military bucketed out water from homes into the street alongside families.
By midday the rains had paused and residents had begun to remove the water that had begun filling their homes in the early hours of the morning, they said.
“The beds, the refrigerators, the stoves, all the furniture got wet. The whole house was flooded,” Cecilia Palomar told Reuters outside her home. “My mother doesn’t want to leave. We took her to my brother’s room, to higher ground. She’s elderly, but she doesn’t want to leave. She doesn’t want to be away from her home.”
Mexico’s National Civil Protection Coordination (CNPC) has placed 28 municipalities in Jalisco and Colima under its highest cyclone alert level, while another 93 municipalities were under a high alert level, according to civil protection bulletins.
Puerto Vallarta’s international airport has temporarily closed, while authorities have suspended nonessential activities and opened emergency shelters in threatened coastal communities.
The NHC warned that heavy rainfall through Monday could trigger life-threatening flooding and mudslides, particularly in mountainous areas.
Simon intensified rapidly into a Category 4 hurricane on Saturday, prompting authorities to deploy military personnel, emergency workers and civil protection teams to vulnerable coastal communities.
The storm comes a week after Hurricane Polo struck Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula as a Category 2 hurricane, toppling trees and utility poles and flooding streets.
(Reporting by Alberto Fajardo and Daniel Becerril in Manzanillo and Sarah Kinosian in Mexico City; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Mark Porter)
