Are there natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes, fire or hurricanes in Puerto Vallarta?

Puerto Vallarta is more prepared compared to Sayulita (about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, which is where I’m from) when it comes to natural disasters because they have contingency plans in place. When there is a hurricane and the warning level is yellow, they start evacuating people from the beaches onto higher ground in order to prevent any casualties. Puerto Vallarta is very prepared for these types of disasters though it doesn’t always happen. The last one that they...

Puerto Vallarta is more prepared compared to Sayulita (about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, which is where I’m from) when it comes to natural disasters because they have contingency plans in place. When there is a hurricane and the warning level is yellow, they start evacuating people from the beaches onto higher ground in order to prevent any casualties. Puerto Vallarta is very prepared for these types of disasters though it doesn’t always happen. The last one that they experienced there was Hurricane Patricia where they only experienced heavy rains and strong winds.

 

Several years ago, Sayulita had a hurricane that destroyed the bridge. I wasn’t here then but my aunt told me that they had to wait until the bridge was reconstructed before they could go out. 

 

In general, we get about three or four hurricanes during the rainy season. However I have not experienced a hurricane here in Sayulita where I live now but I did when I was in Michoacán. Here in Sayulita, mountains surround us and I think that helps in breaking up the storms. 

 

We do not have earthquakes in the Puerto Vallarta area, either. For fires, most houses here have fire extinguishers in order to prevent fire from happening but I haven’t really seen that happen here in Sayulita, where I live. 

 

Flooding used to happen here when the houses are still not adequate and there is a lot of rain. However, I haven’t seen any flooding caused by heavy rainfall here recently.  

 

(Path of Hurricane Patricia, which slowed down when it approached the  mountains of Mexico, pictured.)

The two natural disasters that are more likely to happen in Puerto Vallarta would be earthquakes and hurricanes. We have had tremors here in Puerto Vallarta, somewhere between a 5 and 5.5 magnitude earthquake, and at that time I was on the 6th floor of the building where I live. The building swayed during the tremor, but there was no damage to the building afterwards. 

 

You often don’t even notice that there has been a shake or an earthquake. We have an...

The two natural disasters that are more likely to happen in Puerto Vallarta would be earthquakes and hurricanes. We have had tremors here in Puerto Vallarta, somewhere between a 5 and 5.5 magnitude earthquake, and at that time I was on the 6th floor of the building where I live. The building swayed during the tremor, but there was no damage to the building afterwards. 

 

You often don’t even notice that there has been a shake or an earthquake. We have an online community here for expats, and oftentimes, everybody starts tweeting, “Did you feel that?” Most people say they didn’t notice it. We haven’t had anything catastrophic, but we certainly have had some swaying from time to time. 

 

For a girl from the prairies who never feels the swells and the tremors, it’s like, “Wow! This is neat! What is that?” It’s a funny thing because you should be afraid, but you’re really not. It’s just this little swaying. First, you’re questioning, “Am I feeling this?” By the time you figure it out, it’s over. Luckily, I have not experienced anything higher than the magnitude 5 or 6. I have a level of comfort here based on how buildings here are built to sway and to not crumble or be problematic. 

 

Hurricanes, on the other hand, are very interesting because when the supposedly largest hurricane of all time was supposed to hit our area in the Bay of Banderas, my husband and I hunkered down thinking that this could be “The Big One,” and had fortified ourselves in a small room. The building in which we live is completely concrete, so we figured we would try and stay at the back where there is no glass. We waited, and we were watching on “The News Channel” that said it was going to be category 6, which I believe is unheard of. 

 

We were watching the news and waiting for the hurricane to hit, but it never did. What was interesting about it is the way that the Bay of Banderas is configured. Hurricanes are unlikely to hit the Bay of Banderas. Because hurricanes tend to spin one direction, and the way the Bay of Banderas is formed is a different configuration that the hurricane would spin into, it would be very unlikely. 

 

There’s an arm on the south part of the bay that is a mountain, and when a hurricane does hit that mountain, the mountain takes the gusto out of the hurricane and out of the winds. 

 

The only big issues that we have had here in Vallarta are some swells of the water when there are hurricanes. We did have some damage back in the 90’s where the water swell had come up, causing the water in the ocean to come up and go into the pools. I remember that the Sheraton Hotel had had some flooding in the main level because it was built low. 

 

The swells from the 90’s caused some damage to the streets of Vallarta from the water coming up. The biggest thing here would be if we had a hurricane and we ended up with a swell that would come up, but in the 8 years that I’ve lived here, I have not seen any swells, and even prior to living here, when I was still visiting Puerto Vallarta, there was only that one swell that had come up. Vallarta was built again within a month after that swell, and we were all back to business.

 

(Costalegre  near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, pictured.)