Hurricane Barbara Landfall: 2 Dead In Oaxaca As Barbara Weakens To Tropical Storm

Two people have been confirmed dead as Hurricane Barbara made landfall yesterday afternoon on southern Pacific states in Mexico. A 26-year-old Mexican man, Emanuel Salinas López, drowned on Tuesday night after trying to cross a swollen stream in Pinotepa Nacional, in the state of Oaxaca. And a 61-year-old American, Douglas Ketchum, died while surfing at Playa Azul, a beach near the resort town of Puerto Escondido. 14 fishermen who launched their boats on Wednesday morning in Tapanatepec, also in Oaxaca state, have since been reported missing, according to the Associated Press. Barbara has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.

Also on Tuesday prior to the storm's landfall, a 55-year-old man attempted to cross a stream near Santa Cruz Zenzontepec, Oaxaca, and was swept away by the current. Authorities have not managed to find him.

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Upon its arrival ashore yesterday afternoon, Hurricane Barbara's winds were about 75 mph, though by evening the maximum sustained winds had dropped to about 60 mph.

Fishing villages along the coast were the hardest hit, with some 500 residences under floodwaters which rose as high as six feet, according to La Jornada. 3,600 inhabitants of villages in the Tapanatepec area are in shelters. The municipal president has said that about 13,000 hectares of mango fields have also suffered damages.

Before Barbara was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane yesterday, the Civil Protection System declared a red alert on 44 of Chiapas state's 144 municipalities due to heavy rains, and more than 1,000 schools suspended classes both in Chiapas and in Oaxaca.

The Federal Electricity Commission reported that it had dispatched over 800 workers to the red alert zone as well as 320 vehicles, 153 cranes, a helicopter and 113 emergency generators.

A tropical storm alert remains in place from Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, to Pijijiapan, Chiapas. Heavy rains are expected to continue in the eastern part of Oaxaca and the west of Chiapas. The storm is expected to downgrade into a rain system well before it reaches Coatzacoalcos, a major Gulf oil port located on the other side of the narrow strip of land known as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The US National Hurricane Center says that the eye of the storm will continue moving over the southeast of Mexico before dissipating on Friday. Mexico's Meteorological Service has predicted 14 storms for this season, of which six may become tropical storms, four moderate-sized hurricanes and four others hurricanes of a large scale.