Waves batter El Salvador's coast

Storms far out in the Pacific Ocean resulted in damaging waves reaching El Salvador's coast today. According to the AP:
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) - Unusually high Pacific waves battered beaches from El Salvador to Mexico and carried people out to sea, prompting authorities in some places to order swimmers out of the water Tuesday.

At least two people were killed.

Waves topping three metres swept away a dozen swimmers near La Libertad on Monday, 10 of whom were plucked from the water by boats and a helicopter, Green Cross emergency worker Jose Larin said. A 35-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy were killed.

El Salvador's government advised people "to avoid swimming at our beaches due to the risk," Interior Minister Miguel Bolanos told a news conference Tuesday.

Hundreds of kilometres to the north in Mexico, 16 people were rescued after being carried away by high surf in the resorts Acapulco and Mazatlan. Lifeguards in Mazatlan ordered swimmers out of the water, local media reported.

The large waves may be the result of swells generated last week by a powerful storm thousands of kilometres away off the western coast of South America, said U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.

El Diario de Hoy has a photo gallery of the wave activity here. In June 2006, equally tall waves also crashed into the same section of El Salvador's coast.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What a blessing that didn´t happen a week earlier when the beaches were full of people, a good percentage of whom were alcohol impaired. The undertow here is scary most of the time anyway, but the death toll from something like this during Semana Santa would have been much higher.
Anonymous said…
Really good waves at Sunzal. Triple overhead and clean on Monday morning. Amazing. A lot of broken boards though...
Hodad said…
you have no idea how bummed i am to hear that
when it was waist to chest here with partial wetsuit yesterday
arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh

soon, soon, but hey, I am blessed to have had 24 years of waves in El Sal
patience mikey
mommy first, almost ready