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March 28, 2024

Hurricane Odile slams Mexico’s Baja California

Hurricane Odile

Victor R. Caivano / AP

Winds blow palm trees on the beach in Los Cabos, Mexico, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Odile.

Updated Monday, Sept. 15, 2014 | 1:36 p.m.

Hurricane Odile

A man looks at a destroyed convenience store trashed by Hurricane Odile in Los Cabos, Mexico, Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. Hurricane Odile hammered Mexico's Baja California Peninsula overnight, tearing away the facades of luxury resorts, shattering countless car and hotel windows and leaving lobbies swamped and full of debris on Monday. Launch slideshow »

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Hurricane Odile blazed a trail of destruction through Mexico's Baja California Peninsula that leveled everything from ramshackle homes to big box stores and luxury hotels, leaving roads and entire neighborhoods as disaster zones Monday.

The storm, which made landfall near Cabo San Lucas the previous night as a powerful Category 3 hurricane, toppled trees, power poles and road signs along the main highway, which at one point was swamped by rushing floodwaters. Countless windows were blown out of rental cars and high-end hotel rooms, and resort facades crumbled to the ground.

"It's the entire corridor" between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, said Deneb Poli, a medical worker at the Hotel Melia Cabo Real. She said all the hotel's guests and employees were fine, but electricity and phone lines were cut and cellphone coverage was spotty. "There are parts of hotels that are completely collapsed. ... The damage is pretty extensive."

The Los Cabos international airport remained closed to all flights on Monday.

All along the highway, homes and businesses were heavily damaged with many reduced to shells with only the core structure intact. The walls of an OfficeMax collapsed into the parking lot. A convenience store was ripped apart with the contents of its shelves dumped to the ground. A Comex paint shop sign was missing its "x," ripped away from the building by the gale-force winds.

In Colonia Unidad Real, a neighborhood that sprang up years ago in a former creek bed, hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed with debris scattered everywhere.

After spending a harrowing night with her in-laws, Graciela Castillo Monroy, 44, and her family returned to find the roof of their home gone and all but two of its cinderblock walls collapsed. They piled what belongings could be salvaged atop a soggy mattress and began picking up the pieces.

"Well, time to start over again," Monroy said. "Because we don't have any other option but to forge ahead."

The newspaper Tribuna de los Cabos reported people being injured by flying glass, power lines and traffic signals down throughout the city and a fire at the Cascadas resort on Medano Beach. No details about the blaze were immediately available.

"From what we have seen around here, everything is pretty much destroyed," said Alejandro Tealdi, a 32-year-old resident of Cabo San Lucas. His home was damaged and suffered some flooding, but nobody was hurt. "In the seven years I've been here, I've never seen anything hit like this."

Odile continued to lash the state of Baja California Sur as it marched northward with strong winds and heavy rains, but it weakened to a Category 1 hurricane and was expected to be downgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm had maximum sustained winds near 90 mph (150 kph) Tuesday afternoon. It was centered about 65 miles (100 kilometers) south of Loreto and moving to the north-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph).

Odile was expected to drop 6 to 12 inches of rain with isolated accumulations of 18 inches, threatening to unleash dangerous flash floods and slides.

"We have many flooded streets and are maintaining five shelters with between 500 and 800 evacuees," said Eduardo Bautista, director of Civil Protection in the state capital, La Paz. "So far we have no casualties."

Forecasters also warned of a dangerous storm surge with large waves as well as drenching rains capable of causing landslides and flash floods.

Across the region, people hunkered inside overnight to ride out the storm's wrath. In one hotel near San Jose del Cabo, guests moved from a makeshift shelter into crowded basement storage areas after the boarded up windows failed.

A hurricane warning was in effect from Punta Abreojos to Santa Rosalia.

Meanwhile in the central Atlantic, Hurricane Edouard strengthened to a Category 2 storm Monday with maximum sustained winds near 105 mph (165 kph), although it was forecast to remain far out at sea and pose no threat to land.

The U.S. hurricane center said Edouard's center was 655 miles (1,055 kilometers) east-southeast of Bermuda and was moving northwest at 14 mph (22 kph).

Associated Press writer Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed.

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