It took a while, but today we heard from a friend living in Barra de Navidad in the State of Jalisco, about the impact of Hurricane Jova this week. We're especially fond of Barra and have sailed there many times over the past ten years, dropping the hook in the popular anchorage. Just before Jova made landfall, I saw a hurricane map that showed Barra squarely in the storm's path and I had wondered all week about my friends there, and my favorite hangouts, like the Sands Hotel where I swam for free in the pool on hot afternoons. Fred sent links to photos and a
couple of
videos taken by Salvador Cobian during the height of the storm.
Also heavily damaged was Cihuatlan, a small city inland from Barra, on the road to Manzanillo.
My friend Steve posted first-hand
reports from Melaque, across the Bahia de Navidad from Barra. His neighbors suffered severe flooding, but even though he lives very close to the beach, Steve stayed more or less dry.
From what I can see, the damage to Barra was at least as bad as what we experienced here in San Carlos when Jimena roared through two years ago. Fred, a British fellow sailor we've known more than a dozen years, tends toward hyperbole, but in this case when he described Jova as "a nightmare," we had no trouble believing him.
6 comments:
Most of the damage that happened in Barra started earlier in the summer. The waves had eroded almost all of the beach and had already undercut the beach. A police station and at least two restaurants had toppled before the hurricane. The storm merely sped up the process. The damage was inevitable. Building on sand is always a temporary project. But it is still sad. The amazing thing to me is how quickly people get on with their lives. In Melaque, it is almost as if nothing had happened.
My friends who have a house on a canal in Barra emailed their version. They didn't sustain any damage, but it sure sounds like it was pretty crazy there for awhile! They also said Melaque had extreme flooding...?
After 18 years in New Orleans, I don't quite grasp why people voluntarily live in hurricane zones. Different strokes, I guess.
Wow, I hadn't even heard that there was a hurricane down there, we're still focused on drought and grass fires up here. Steve that's awesome that the people get on with their lives and get things back up and running so quickly. Unlike here in the States where they sit back and wait on a FEMA check.
The fotos look to be from Manzanillo but the idea is the same
From someone in Melaque ... believe me it was not fun. 3 times as much water as the last flood here. The canal in west Melaque was 6 feet over it's banks leaving many houses with a foot or two of water inside. My car was covered to the windshield and don't know if it will recover. 100 people in the school shelter downtown, airport closed, all of Cihuatlan flooded as the river crested about 25 feet over normal. It wasn't the wind ... it was the water
Sad but from I hear already repairs underway!
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