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Tag: veracruz

  • Mexico Plane Crash Leaves Five Dead, More Injured

    Five people are dead and two were injured when a small airplane crashed in Mexico on Thursday en route to the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

    The plane took off from the port of Tampico in Tamaulipas, known officially as the Free and Sovereign State of Tamaulipas, and came down in a mountainous area near the coast.

    The office of the Veracruz state civil defense says that the cause of the crash is still under investigation, though weather does not appear to have played a role in the accident.

    Navy officials joined local police and other first responders for recovery and rescue efforts. The two survivors were flown via helicopter to a hospital in Xalapa, the state capital, said emergency services director Ricardo Maza Limon. One of the survivors is in critical condition while the other remains stable.

    Though the number of airplane accidents per year has steadily decreased since 1989, 97 percent of aviation fatalities occur in general aviation, not commercial flights, according to National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman.

    “The NTSB is so concerned with general aviation safety that we have placed this on our ‘most wanted’ list of transportation safety improvements,” Hersman said.

    Truth be told, small airplanes average five accidents per day. But most of these are preventable.

    Rich Stowell, a pilot and instructor for 25 years, says private pilots don’t get the training they need to recover from emergencies.

    “We have to replace survival instinct with the brain telling the body, ‘no you have to do this and do that,’” he said.

    Last Spring the NTSB released safety videos to help better educate the pilots that control the 220,000 private airplanes in America today. The videos include such topics as: Is Your Aircraft Talking to You? Listen!, Avoid Aerodynamic Stalls at Low Altitude, and Mechanics: Manage Risks to Ensure Safety.

    Some news sources are reporting that only four people died in the Mexico plane crash last week. That has yet to be confirmed, as do the identities of those killed.

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Mexico Storm: Tropical Storm and Hurricane Threaten

    Mexico is currently having to deal with two different natural disasters at the same time. Tropical Storm Manuel edged onto Mexico’s Pacific coast earlier today, as Hurricane Ingrid continued to swirl offshore on the other side of the country. Heavy rains and landslides have caused at least 15 deaths and thousands more have been evacuated from the damaged areas. Although it has remained a threat and produced flash floods and mudslides, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Manuel began to weaken as soon as it made landfall near the port of Manzanillo.

    Mexico continues to get attacked on both sides of the country, in an unfortunate situation dealing with the vicious Ingrid and Manuel simultaneously. As a typhoon hits Japan at the same time and in the United States, Colorado just experienced a large amount of flooding, there is certainly something odd going on with the climate around the world right now. It seems hard for people to continue to deny the effects of climate change after drastic and devastating events like these continue to happen.

    Each of these storms continue to grow and have immense power as well. CBS News reports that Manuel winds reached a maximum of about 45 mph (75 kph) and was moving to the northwest at 9 mph (15 kph) late Sunday afternoon. Its center was about 15 miles (20 kilometers) north of Manzanillo. The rain from Hurricane Ingrid has caused landslides that killed three people in the central state of Puebla and a woman also died after a landslide buried her house in the state of Hidalgo.

    Hurricane Ingrid, the second hurricane of the Atlantic storm season, is expected to reach Mexico’s mainland by Monday, after gaining strength from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Officials in the state of Veracruz were forced to evacuate those living on the coast on Friday night, and civil protection authorities said that more than 5,300 people had been moved to safer ground. An orange alert has also been imposed in parts of southern Veracruz, which is the highest possible, according to the Tampa Tribune.

    Image via Youtube