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Hurricane Stan Kills At Least 68

Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's Gulf coast Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and spawning related storms across the region that left at least 68 people dead, most from landslides in El Salvador.

The storm, which whipped up 80-mph winds before being downgraded to a tropical storm, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a busy port 185 miles east of Mexico City.

The storm's outer bands swiped the city, knocking down trees and flooding low-lying neighborhoods, and closing some highways, authorities said. State officials said seven people, including two children, were injured, most by falling trees or roofs that collapsed in the communities of Alvarado and Montepio, south of here and closer to where Stan came ashore.

All three of Mexico's Gulf coast crude-oil loading ports were closed Tuesday as a precaution, but the shutdowns weren't expected to affect oil prices.

Forecasters said the hurricane spawned separate storms across Central America and southern Mexico, provoking flooding and landslides. Some 49 people had been killed during two days of flooding in El Salvador, Interior Secretary Rene Figueroa said Tuesday night.

More than 16,700 others had been evacuated to 167 shelters set up all over the country, he said.

Nine people died in Nicaragua, including six migrants believed to be Ecuadoreans killed in a boat wreck, Civil Defense official Maj. Porfirio Castrillo said.

Three other people were killed in the Nicaraguan provinces of Leon, Granada, Matagalpa and Managua, which have experienced severe flooding. Authorities said some bridges and highways were damaged.

Four deaths were reported in Honduras and three in Guatemala. In Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, a river overflowed its banks and roared through the city of Tapachula, carrying some ramshackle homes of wood and metal with it.

Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar said four people were missing and could have been swept away. He said 600 families had been evacuated from homes around Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. Three bridges in the area were destroyed by floodwaters.

"Sadly, we know it's going to keep raining," Salazar said.

In Costa Rica, a 36-year-old woman was asleep early Tuesday when her home was buried by a landslide, killing her.

Rain was still falling Tuesday in much of Central America, forcing thousands from their homes. Among those evacuated were residents of the Salvadoran neighborhood of Santa Tecla, just outside the nation's capital, where a strong earthquake caused a massive landslide in January 2001.

Officials have worried the mountain running alongside the neighborhood might collapse again with heavy rains or another quake.

Honduras said it would send aid to El Salvador and Mexico also offered financial assistance. Late Tuesday, Salvadoran officials declared a state of public calamity, allowing the executive branch to use public funds for emergency response.

Back in Mexico's Veracruz state, which includes the port city of the same name, schools canceled classes and officials at a nearby nuclear power plant had readied the facility for strong winds and rains.

Some 38,000 people abandoned their homes statewide, heading for thousands of shelters set up all along the coast and further inland.

At Chachalacas beach, 20 miles north of the city of Veracruz, restaurant owner Celestino Criollo struggled amid rising winds and intermittent rains to clear equipment from his beach-side, thatched-roof seafood restaurant.

Criollo said the storm's rapid approach had caught many beach dwellers by surprise.

"We knew it would be strong and the tide high, but we didn't think it would come this quick," he said. "They advised us, but they could have done it sooner."

In the neighboring state of Oaxaca, which was also affected by heavy rains and wind, officials opened 950 shelters as a preventive measure and were keeping an eye on 80 communities considered to be vulnerable.

The closed crude-oil loading ports — Coatzacoalcos, Dos Bocas and Cayo Arcas — handle most of the 1.8 million barrels a day of crude oil exported by state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

Five exploratory oil platforms also were evacuated Monday, but so far the storm hadn't affected the company's production of 3.4 million barrels a day of crude oil, Mexico's Communications and Transportation Department said.

Pemex is the world's third-largest oil producer, and most of its exports are sent to the United States.

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