Tropical Storm Rick kills second person, winds calm

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 9:44 PM Posted by Beijing News


Tropical Storm Rick lost strength as it neared Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Tuesday, but pounding surf killed a second person when a teenage boy drowned while swimming at a beach.

Rick's violent winds calmed down to 65 mph but the U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm could still cause dangerous flooding and mud slides when it brushes past resorts at the peninsula's southern tip late in the evening.

The NHC warned of dangerous surf conditions along the southern Baja California coast as Rick -- which over the weekend blew into a ferocious Category 5 hurricane -- moved northeast at 7 mph and was seen picking up speed.

At midday it was 200 miles south-southwest of the resort town of Cabo San Lucas. It was expected to pass to the south of Baja, without hitting it, before making landfall on the mainland on Wednesday.

A 16-year-old boy was swept away by surging waves at a Cabo San Lucas beach on Monday and a 38-year-old man from the nearby state of Sinaloa was killed nearby on Sunday when rough surf pounded him against rocks on the shoreline.

Mexico has no oil drilling facilities in the area and only a very small amount of its crude is shipped via the Pacific.

Rick was the seventh hurricane of the eastern north Pacific season. Last month Jimena, a treacherous Category 4 hurricane, spared luxury resorts but pummeled central Baja California with whipping winds and rain, killing an elderly man whose house filled with floodwater.

Business owners and residents around Los Cabos nailed plywood over their windows ahead of the storm and readied sandbags, officials prepared hurricane shelters and many U.S. sports fishermen dropped out of a three-day fishing tournament scheduled for Wednesday.

Reporting by Susy Buchanan, Editing by Sandra Maler



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