Heavy rains finally hit Cancun

Cancun — Several days of on and off-again rains came to an end with a long bout of heavy rainfall finally ending the Cancun, Riviera Maya drought while leaving roads flooded and streetlights out.

According to the Ministry of Public Safety and Traffic, the city of Cancun suffered five stalled traffic lights and six auto accidents in a span of about 12 hours after the heavy rains began to soak roadways. They report that of those accidents, only two people were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

The entire region was finally doused with rainfall as a disturbance made its way across the northern portion of the state. Temporary flooding was recorded in many city streets even though 360 city officials from public services were out removing debris from storm drain tops in a bid to reduce the flooding.

Strong winds also accompanied the disturbance, causing the Port Captaincy in Cancun to temporarily closed marinas after gusts of up to 55 kms/hour were recorded. Ports in Cancun were closed to small vessels under 40 feet, while a safety reminder was issued for those in Isla Mujeres.

While there were no damage reports around Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos activated Operation Storm due to the heavy rains and gusty winds that affected the area Tuesday evening and into Wednesday. Municipal president Laura Fernández Piña activated Operation Storm as Tropical Wave Number 31 caused the collapse of several trees and flooding in parts of the community.

“On the instructions of the Municipal President we have launched the operation to address any setbacks in the municipal capital caused by bad weather, which can be classified as the first heavy rain of the season, which was accompanied by strong gusts of wind,” commented the director of Municipal Public Services, Miguel Ángel Zetina Azcorra.

He said they had reports of at least five collapsed trees, one of whose branches were on medium-voltage cables, so electricity had to be cut for two blocks to avoid a major accident.

“Due to the heavy rain and lightning, we had to wait until this morning to be able to cut the branches and thus, be able to reconnect the energy to the affected properties. At night there was also a blackout of approximately one hour throughout Region 17 because the high voltage cables collided,” he explained.

León Salas Licea, director of Firefighters, said that together with public services personnel they worked removing of garbage and vegetation from the sewers to help street drainage.

“It is predicted that rainfall will return during the early hours of Thursday, so we call on the population to avoid taking the garbage bags to the street and wait for the collection truck to pass to prevent any waste from clogging the sewers.

“In this contingency alone we accounted for 54 waterloggings, most of them due to this problem of rubbish covering drains,” he said.