Odile Hurricane: Two Dead, Three Missing In Northwest Mexico

Two people were killed and three others went missing during Hurricane Odile, which pounded Mexico's Baja California Sur state earlier this week, a state official told Efe Thursday. Kyong Jim Park, the Korean manager of the El Boleo mining company, was killed when his vehicle was swept away by a river in Santa Rosalia, a community outside the city of Mulege, Baja California Sur deputy state information office director Jesus Leyva said. Sung Ken Chai, another Korean executive riding in the vehicle, is listed as missing and it is highly unlikely that he survived. The two Korean executives were initially listed as missing, but 62-year-old Park's body was later found.

Hunter Treaow, a German national, died in the storm and two other people who were out on a boat with him are listed as missing, the state official said. Officials are preparing the first damage estimates from Odile, but the job is a tough one because the state sprawls 790 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) from north to south, Leyva said. Los Cabos, which is home to 260,000 people, was the area hardest hit by the hurricane, Leyva said, adding that La Paz, the state capital, Loreto, Comondu and Mulege also sustained damage. The storm washed away roads and destroyed bridges, leaving many communities cut off from the outside world.

Hurricane Odile, which battered Baja California Sur on Sunday night and early Monday, caused extensive damage to the electric grid, toppling high-voltage transmission towers, 2,000 poles and 191 low-voltage power lines, Leyva said. The storm damaged 23 electric substations and knocked down telephone poles, hampering communications across the state in the days after it made landfall. Some 239,000 of the 246,000 individual, business and industrial power customers in the state were left without electricity due to storm damage to the grid, the Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE, said. The lack of power caused shortages of drinking water because water plants and pumps operate with electricity. About 700 people from 200 families lost everything because their flimsy houses were blown away by the storm, Leyva said.