Five Dead as Two Storms Hit Mexico’s Pacific Coast
Hurricane Simon killed a 71-year-old man when a wall collapsed in Chilpancingo, and Tropical Storm Rachel is blamed for the deaths of four members of one family, including two children, found outside Ensenada. Five people are still missing and helicopters have rescued thirty-two.
Simon did not make landfall, weakening to a category two storm and moving away from the coast, though a rain alert remains in force and infrastructure and homes in Acapulco were damaged. The Guerrero state governor Evelyn Salgado confirmed the first death; the four found near Ensenada in Baja California were reported by the state prosecutor’s office. The Baja California governor Marina del Pilar said officials were helping more than fifty people in shelters. What lifts this above a single weather event is the pattern it completes: Simon caps a Pacific hurricane season of record-breaking intensity, with damaging storms running from Hawaii to the Mexican mainland. Acapulco has now been hit repeatedly in three years, and the rebuilding from each storm is still unfinished when the next arrives. The forecast question is whether the rain alert holds through the week, because the deaths so far have come from collapsing structures and flooding rather than from wind.