Hurricane Edges Ashore Near Puerto Vallarta

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico — Hurricane Calvin pushed onto the Mexican mainland near this resort city Wednesday after leaving a trail of flooding and destruction along the lower Pacific Coast.

At least 28 people were reported killed since Monday by winds, floods and storm-related rains. More than 18,000 people were forced from their homes.

Docks and airports closed as the hurricane moved slowly northward past posh resorts, oil ports and fishing villages. Coconut palms and other trees fell. Dozens of buildings were torn off their foundations or washed away.

The storm hit Manzanillo, a city of 93,000, with winds of 85 m.p.h., then sliced inland through sparsely populated countryside on its way toward Puerto Vallarta, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla. By mid-afternoon, the storm was 35 miles south of Puerto Vallarta, a city of 95,000.

Its path would carry it back over the open sea, toward the Gulf of California. Mexican officials declared a hurricane watch for southern Baja California, 300 miles to the northwest of the storm.

(While most Mexico-bound flights from Los Angeles were leaving as scheduled, airline representatives said the storm had interrupted some departures to the resort cities of Acapulco, Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. Regular flights to Acapulco resumed Wednesday morning after various cancellations on Tuesday, officials told The Times, while Manzanillo’s airport reopened Wednesday afternoon.)

There were no immediate reports of deaths in the Manzanillo-Puerto Vallarta region, but phones and power were out in much of the area, many roads were blocked and there was extensive flooding, said Marcelino Rojo of the Civil Protection Agency for Jalisco state.