Hurricane Grace left at least eight dead, including several minors, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, after making landfall with category 3 early Saturday morning.
Hours later, it lost strength until it became a tropical storm, according to the state governor, Cuitláhuac García Jiménez.
The greatest impact of the hurricane occurred in the towns of Poza Rica, Cazones de Herrera and Tecolutla, where the winds reached a speed of 195 km per hour.
"There we are going to focus the initial support that we will direct to the population," said the governor at a press conference shortly after noon (local time) this Saturday.
Initially, the governor reported that three other people were missing, but shortly after the Ministry of Public Security reported that they were found alive by neighbors.
Among the victims are a mother and her five children who died when it fell on their home in the Loma Bonita neighborhood, in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz.
Also in Xalapa, another girl died when a hillside collapsed on her home in the 21 de Marzo neighborhood.
In addition, an elderly person died on Friday night, when a structure fell on him in the town of Poza Rica.
Images from agencies and local media show
dark neighborhoods, trees on the ground and flooded streets
in towns such as Tecolutla and Xalapa.
There are also reports of victims as a result of the destroyed houses.
[Grace makes landfall in Veracruz as a Category 3 hurricane]
The hurricane, with Category 3 winds, is one of the most powerful storms to hit the Mexican east coast in the Gulf in years.
It recorded maximum sustained winds of 125 miles per hour (201 km per hour) and
caused power outages and structural damage.
It quickly weakened as it moved through the mountainous interior of Mexico and turned into a tropical storm by midmorning.
At 10 am (local time) Grace was registering maximum winds of 70 miles per hour and continued to weaken as it continued its course towards the mountains of central and west-central Mexico.
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The US National Hurricane Center predicts that Grace will turn into a tropical depression Saturday night and dissipate early Sunday.
According to the latest report from the Early Warning System for Tropical Cyclones in the state of Veracruz, 160 municipalities in that state are still on orange alert, although the general alert still covers 15 states in the southeast of Mexico.
[Henri turns into a hurricane: the northeast on alert for this Sunday]
However, the Secretary of Public Security of Veracruz, Hugo Gutiérrez Maldonado, assured midmorning that
the state was on a red alert
and shared images of flooded streets in the city of Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz.
Images released at dawn on Saturday by the Veracruz Center for Meteorological Studies and Forecasts showed a city completely in darkness, after power cuts caused by strong winds.
According to the Diario de Xalapa, 22 municipalities in Veracruz are in a state of emergency due to the damage caused by Hurricane Grace.
In the capital,
several vehicles were trapped by water,
a commercial structure was destroyed by a landslide and a woman had to be rescued from her flooded home on Rébsamen avenue.
In the tourist city of Tecolutla, located on the coast of Veracruz, photographers from various news agencies searched houses and commercial premises destroyed by strong winds.
A power line pole lies on the ground on August 21, 2021, after being knocked down by the strong winds of Hurricane Grace, in the town of Tecolutla, in Veracruz, Mexico.
Yahir Ceballos / Reuters
The Mexico City International Airport reported that due to the passage of the hurricane, between Friday and Saturday several flights connecting Veracruz, Tampico, Reynosa, Culiacán, Huatulco and the city of Miami, in the United States, were canceled.
Grace made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane for the first time on the morning of Thursday, August 19, near Tulum, the resort town famous for its Mayan ruins.
Visitors and residents had to seek shelter for hours from the destruction of the weather system, according to the AP agency.
[The arrival of Hurricane Grace in Tulum accelerates the evacuation of residents and tourists]
"The only thing I have left is what I'm wearing,"
said Carlos González, a 35-year-old construction worker, who took shelter with his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old son in a school converted into a shelter. "I knew that my house was not going to hold because it is made of cardboard. When the wind came I was very scared and I decided to leave," he told AP.