By Jose Cortes
MARQUELIA, Mexico (Reuters) -The remnants of Hurricane John soaked a large swath of southwestern Mexico on Tuesday as its trek inland slowed and clean up work got underway, but the once powerful storm still threatened severe flooding and caused at least three deaths.
Stretching across several Mexican states, the storm uprooted trees and electrical posts and ripped off roofs as it made landfall on Monday night and into the early hours of Tuesday, officials told reporters at a briefing.
The affected coastal area is home to both cargo ports and some of the country’s top beach resorts.
Video posted on social media showed sheets of rain pummeling empty streets overnight near the sprawling Lazaro Cardenas port in Michoacan state as strong winds battered trees.
Further south in Oaxaca state, the Puerto Escondido and Huatulco airports popular with tourists had been temporarily closed earlier in the morning.
Two fatalities were reported after a mudslide smothered a house in the small town of Tlacoachistlahuaca, in Guerrero state, located inland in between Puerto Escondido and Acapulco, a major beach resort that was devastated by Hurricane Otis last year.
A third death was also reported in the mountainous area of Guerrero, in the municipality of Malinaltepec, the state’s civil protection agency told Reuters.
Walking across a flooded street in the town of Marquelia, just off Guerrero state’s Pacific coastline, Heidi Carrillo worried about the plight of her neighbors.
“What’s needed right now around the beaches is food, because lots of people there were left without their homes and I think they also need clothes,” she said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Laura Velazquez, the national head of emergency services, said John could cause further “intense rainfall” over Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest states. She said accumulated rainfall overnight and into the morning had totaled nearly 11 inches (28 cm).
John was downgraded from both hurricane and tropical storm strength over the course of the day on Tuesday. Its remnants are currently located about 70 miles (113 km) northwest of Acapulco as it creeps further inland at a speed of just 3 miles per hour (5 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
John’s maximum sustained winds have weakened considerably over the day, now at 35 mph (56 kph), the Miami-based forecaster said in its latest advisory.
The center nonetheless flagged the possibility of flash flooding across parts of southwestern Mexico over the next few days.
(Reporting by Jose Cortes in Guerrero; Additional reporting by Raul Cortes Fernandez; David Alire Garcia and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez in Mexico City, Natalia Siniawski in Madrid and Anushree Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Christina Fincher, Rosalba O’Brien and Bill Berkrot)
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