MEXICO CITY – At least six people died and thousands were evacuated in southeastern Mexico after Tropical Storm Gamma lashed the Yucatan Peninsula’s resort-studded coast with near-hurricane force winds and drenched Tabasco and Chiapas states, authorities said Sunday.
Mexico’s civil defense agency said in a statement that four of the deaths, including two children, were in Chiapas, where a landslide on a mountainous slope buried their home.
The other two deaths were in Tabasco state, where one person was dragged away by the water and another drowned.
TROPICAL STORM GAMMA MEANDERS OFF MEXICO, BRINGING FLOODING AND STORM SURGE
Gamma, along with cold fronts, combined over the weekend to cause extreme rains in parts of the Yucatan Peninsula and Chiapas, affecting more than half a million people.
Damage in Cancun on Oct. 4, 2020, after Tropical Storm Gamma lashed Mexico.
(Ayto Benito Juárez/Twitter)
The hardest-hit state was Tabasco, where more than 3,400 were evacuated to shelters.
The storm came ashore Saturday near Tulum with maximum sustained winds of nearly 70 mph — 4 mph short of hurricane force, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
HURRICANE CENTER ‘CLOSELY MONITORING’ TROPICAL WAVE IN CARIBBEAN, COULD DEVELOP INTO ‘DELTA’
Mexican authorities continued to warn people in the Yucatan Sunday night as Gamma remained stalled offshore.
The forecast track of Tropical Storm Gamma
(Fox News)
The hurricane center said Gamma was about 190 miles east-northeast of Progreso, Mexico, and had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph.
Tropical Storm Gamma is stalled off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Monday.
(Fox News)
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The state’s tourism department reported Friday on Twitter that more than 41,000 tourists were present in Quintana Roo, with hotels in Cancun and Cozumel already at more than 30% occupancy.
The area only recently reopened to tourism after a pandemic shutdown.
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