Two children in Mexico were killed this week after Hurricane Carlotta tore through the country’s Pacific coast with strong winds and heavy rains.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that two sisters, aged 13 and 7, died Friday in the Oaxaca state community of Pluma Hidalgo when a mudslide collapsed their home. The girls’ mother was also reportedly badly injured in the mudslide but is expected to survive.
In addition to the tragic fatalities it caused, Carlotta knocked down power lines and washed out some coastal roads, leaving dozens of communities without cellular service or electricity and unreachable by land.
Carlotta hit the southern Mexican coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Friday and strengthened to a Category 2 shortly after, but weakened in the night to a Category 1 upon making landfall before being downgraded Saturday morning to a tropical storm and later to a tropical depression.
“The rains were very heavy on Friday, but this morning, there is decreased cloud cover as the storm faded,” a civil protection official said.
Since Carlotta’s downgrade, the U.S. National Hurricane says the Mexican government has discontinued all warnings and watches related to the storm.
Fox News reports that for the current hurricane season in the Pacific Ocean, which began May 15 and ends Nov. 30, the National Meteorological Service (SMN) has forecast the formation of 13 hurricanes.
Forecasters have also predicted 13 hurricane-force storms for the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season , which kicked-off on July 1st.
