Hurricane Dean pounds Mexico for a second time

NAUTLA, Mexico  (AFP) - Hurricane Dean on Wednesday hit Mexico for a second time in two days, blasting the eastern state of Veracruz before weakening into a tropical storm that still threatened to trigger dangerous floods and mudslides.

Dean was little more than a shadow of the monster storm that roared onto Mexico's Caribbean coast on Tuesday, but authorities worried that vast areas along its inland track remained at risk from swelling rivers and possible landslides.

One man died in the state of Veracruz when he was electrocuted by a cable that touched the roof he was trying to repair while the storm raged.
That was the first reported fatality from Dean's rampage in Mexico, as forecasters downgraded the weather system from a hurricane to a tropical storm.

While thousands of people remained in emergency shelters as rivers swelled steadily, Petroleos de Mexico (PEMEX) said technicians were set to return to offshore oil platforms where production should be back to normal levels next week.

The state oil company had earlier evacuated all 18,000 personnel from its installations in the Gulf of Mexico, causing a production drop of 2.65 million barrels a day.

Dean hit shore on Wednesday with maximum sustained winds of 160 kilometers (100 miles), but rapidly weakened as it swirled over land and was expected to fizzle out altogether when it hits mountainous areas during the night.

On Tuesday, when it roared onto the Caribbean coast, Dean packed maximum sustained winds of 270 kilometers (165 miles) per hour. That made it the first Atlantic hurricane to make landfall at the topmost category five since Andrew ravaged Florida in 1992.

Despite the storm's initial intensity, Dean did not cause any of the catastrophic damages initially feared as it crossed the Yucatan Peninsula on its way to the Gulf of Mexico and its second landfall.

It spared Cancun and other major resorts, but turned the small tourist village of Mahahual into ruins. Residents who headed to safety ahead of the storm found only destruction when they returned to what were once their homes on Wednesday.

Doors, cement roofs and other debris littered the ground. "Mahahual doesn't exist any more, the wind took it away," said resident Luis Cortes, tears welling in his eyes.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon was in the Yucatan Peninsula Wednesday to survey the damage, after expressing concern over the fate of isolated and impoverished indigenous communities along the storm's path.

Authorities in neighboring Belize said the small Central American country did suffer some damage to buildings, but did not report any deaths.
Before it hit Mexico, Hurricane Dean was blamed for four deaths in Haiti, two in the Dominican Republic, two in Martinique and one in Jamaica.