Dean hits Mexico mainland

MEXICO CITY – Hurricane Dean moved onshore to Mexico’s mainland Wednesday after flattening homes and crops on the Yucatan Peninsula. But the storm appeared to spare lives as well as the country’s signature beach resorts and key oil installations.

The threat of serious flooding and mudslides remained as the former Category 5 hurricane shrank to a tropical storm, dropping heavy rain on villages in the mountains of the eastern Sierra Madre.

An estimated 20,000 people along the coast were evacuated, but authorities have listed no deaths or serious injuries from Hurricane Dean. One man was reportedly electrocuted Wednesday by a power line while trying to secure his roof in advance of the hurricane.

“The tropical storm continues moving west, and overnight it will reach the city of Queretaro and the central part of country, but it will be much weaker,” said Martin Reyes of Mexico’s National Weather Service.

As a precaution, government officials closed public schools in the states of Hidalgo, Puebla and Queretaro.

Mexican officials had prepared for the worst, evacuating thousands of tourists from Caribbean beaches and sending troops, medical personnel and even portable ATMs after Hurricane Dean killed 20 people farther east and then headed toward Cancun and other resorts along Mexico’s Mayan Riviera.

Dean landed early Tuesday about 150 miles south of Cancun, at Felipe Carrillo Puerto, where farmers, fishermen and villagers bore the brunt of the storm’s force. The state capital of Quintana Roo, Chetumal, had widespread flooding and hundreds of fallen trees. State officials said 15,000 families are homeless.

Rain and winds reaching 165 mph wrecked an estimated 60,000 acres of crops – mostly corn but also papaya, watermelon and citrus, state officials said.

After battering the Yucatan Peninsula overnight Tuesday, the hurricane weakened as it moved west over land toward the oil-rich southern Gulf of Mexico. Mexican officials had evacuated oil rigs, halting production in a region that normally yields 2.6 million barrels of oil a day and 2.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

By the time it reached oil platforms on the gulf, Hurricane Dean had diminished from a rare Category 5 to a Category 1 hurricane.

Officials of Pemex , Mexico’s national oil company, said Wednesday that they hoped to resume oil operations by Friday in the southern gulf.