In Mexico, Acapulco licks its wounds two months after Hurricane Otis

2024-01-03 05:45:13
Aerial view of the damage caused by the passage of Hurricane Otis in Puerto Marques, in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, October 28, 2023. RODRIGO OROPEZA / AFP

The trees on the ground are undoubtedly the most visible consequences of the passage of Hurricane Otis, category 5, on the tourist resort of Acapulco, on October 24, 2023. Two months after the disaster, which left 52 dead, 32 missing and significant material damage, the barrels are still puncturing the roofs of houses and the asphalt of the roads, or are piled up along the sidewalks, cut into logs. The coconut, mango and lemon plantations are devastated, and century-old parota and ceiba trees, with gigantic trunks, have been uprooted.

This seaside resort, whose many touches of green around the blue of the Pacific Ocean were praised, has lost almost all of its vegetation cover. According to the environment department of the state of Guerrero, nearly two million trees fell under the wind gusts which reached up to 270 kilometers per hour. “We immediately felt the difference, right after the hurricane. The heat was much more stifling, the gray areas had all disappeared, and then we understood what we had lost. says Angeles Navarro, owner of a small hotel on the beach of Coyuca de Benitez, twenty minutes from Acapulco, a town also ravaged by the hurricane.

“We have never experienced such ecological devastation after a hurricane: in addition to the trees, the region’s nurseries were destroyed. But this is an opportunity to rethink the vegetation cover: replant fewer palm trees which are not very resistant to wind and more endemic species. estimates Ernesto Herrero, director of the NGO Reforestamos Mexico (Let’s Reforest Mexico), based in Mexico City.

Satellite images from NASA, the American space agency, before and after the passage of the hurricane, confirm this change: from green, the landscape became brown, including in the municipalities north of Acapulco. An hour from the tourist resort, the town of Ejido Viejo, which lived mainly from fruit crops, shows a ravaged landscape. “We were the green lung of Acapulco,” eexplains local elected official Fernando Fernandez Mejia, showing a map of his municipality. “We had a forest reserve in the hills to the north, on which we were going to issue carbon credits. We have lost this invaluable heritage, it is much more serious than houses and fruit tree plantations. »

Enthusiasm about “AMLO”

Ejido Viejo was in the path of the hurricane, which blew off roofs and cars and within hours. The river that runs through the village overflowed, flooding the houses with brown mud. At the end of December 2023, the town still seems a field of ruin. The excavators left piles of earth in front of the houses and pushed the wrecks of cars and the trunks of palm trees further away. In front of the town hall, the tin roof which covered the basketball court was bent by the force of the wind. The soldiers are still there, preparing a “soup kitchen” every morning for around a hundred residents: “At first, all 1,500 residents were queuing because no one had water or gas. But now help has arrived,” said a soldier, stirring a large pot of spaghetti.

You have 60% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.