By LUIS ALBERTO CRUZ
PUERTO ESCONDIDO, Mexico (AP) — Two people are dead after former hurricane John barreled into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.
John grew into a major hurricane in a matter of hours Monday and made landfall about 80 miles east of the resort of Acapulco before declining to a tropical storm after moving inland.
John came ashore near the town of Punta Maldonado late Monday night as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. It weakened back to tropical storm status early Tuesday with maximum sustained wind speeds of 50 mph and was expected to weaken rapidly.
Evelyn Salgado, the governor of the coastal state of Guerrero, said two people died when the storm sent a mudslide crashing into their house on the remote mountain of Tlacoachistlahuaca (TLAH-ko-chis-tla-waka), further from the coast.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned that the storm’s slow pace and heavy rains could cause potentially catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides in some Mexican states.
“Seek higher ground, protect yourselves and do not forget that life is the most important thing; material things can be replaced. We are here,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote on the social media platform X.
Lincer Casiano Clemente, the mayor of the town of Marquelia, near where the hurricane hit on the coast, said early Tuesday that “there are a lot of houses, mainly the ones with sheet roofing, where the force of the air blew off the roofing.”
The mayor said no deaths or injuries had been reported in Marquelia so far. But power was knocked out along large parts of the coast, and highways were blocked by fallen trees.
On Tuesday morning, the storm was 60 miles north-northwest of Acapulco and moving northwest at 8 mph. It was forecast to dawdle along the coastal mountains, even dip back over the Pacific, but continue weakening throughout the day.
The hurricane center said heavy rainfall over coastal southwest Mexico through the week was likely to cause “significant and possible catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides” in parts of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero states.
Monday’s unexpected surge in strength caught scientists, authorities and residents of the area by surprise, something AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Matt Benz attributed to warmer oceans, which add fuel to hurricanes.
As a result, surprise surges in hurricanes’ strength have become increasingly common, Benz said.
“These are storms that we haven’t really experienced before,” he said. “Rapid intensification has occurred more frequently in modern times as opposed to back in the historical record. So that’s telling us there’s something going on there.”
The storm is bleak news for the region, which was walloped by Otis, a similar rapidly intensifying hurricane, in 2023.
Otis devastated the resort city of Acapulco, where residents had little warning of the strength of what was about to hit them. One of the most rapidly intensifying hurricanes ever seen, scientists at the time said it was a product of changing climate conditions.
Otis blew out power in the city for days, left bodies scattered on the coast and desperate family members searching for lost loved ones. Much of the city was left in a state of lawlessness and thousands scavenged in stores, scrambled for food and water.
The government of López Obrador received harsh criticism for its slow response to Otis, but authorities have since pledged to pick up their speed.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum said her government planned to work on improving an early alert system, similar to what the country has with earthquakes.