2023-10-26 17:42:00
The city of Acapulco, one of the main tourist destinations of Mexico and located in the southern state of Guerrero, remains incommunicado and without a damage count after the passage of the destroyer Hurricane Otiswhich made landfall this Wednesday as a Category 5 hurricane.
When almost a day has passed since it touched down near Acapulco in the Mexican Pacific, no authority has issued any report on the effects of the hurricane in the city or neighboring townswhere Otis hit, one of the most powerful cyclones in history and which made landfall in the early hours of Wednesday after a sudden intensification in less than 12 hours.
Multiple videos on social networks uploaded by people who were in the city gave an account of the great material damage in some of the buildings –mainly hotels– located on the Coastal Road, which is located right in front of the Pacific Ocean.
The moment, failed to restore electricity nor telecommunications in Acapulco.
The same goes for access roads, despite the fact that state authorities recently reported that the passage was reopened to emergency vehicles in both directions on kilometer 360 of the Mexico-Acapulco highway after the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was blocked on his way to the coastal city.
López Obrador aims to reach Acapulco by road
A couple of hours before the president of Mexico announced that Acapulco was moving, tourist destination that has close to a million inhabitants, to know the damage first hand.
“Let’s go there now” the president pointed out to a group of reporters who intercepted him while he was traveling by land from Mexico City.
In the affected area there are already members of his cabinet: the Secretary of Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval; that of Marina, Rafael Ojeda; of Security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and the coordinator of National Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez.
In less than a day, Otis upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, the highest of these natural phenomena, headed for the coasts of Guerrero, where communication “was completely lost”, indicated López Obrador in his usual morning press conference.
According to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the hurricane left more than half a million people without power.
In the last few hours, Otis was downgraded to a low pressure storm during its passage over the state of Michoacán, a neighbor of the southern state of Guerrero, reported this Wednesday the National Meteorological Service (SNM), although it pointed out that the rains will continue throughout the day.
Silence of the state authorities
The governor of Guerrero, Evelyn Salgado, assured early in the morning that she was in the affected areabut communication by state and local authorities has been very limited.
According to the Mexican Government, the Public Treasury has up to 18,000 million pesos (about 930 million euros) in reserve funds for natural disasters such as Otis.
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The hurricane also affected earthquake warning services in three Mexican Pacific states: Michoacán, Guerrero and Oaxaca, main epicenters of earthquakes in the country.
On the other hand, the Mexican Seismic Alert System (Sasmex) indicated that the impact of Otis as a category 5 prevented the communication of 27 sensors in this region of the Pacific Ocean, so in the event of a strong earthquake, close to the affected sensors, a seismic warning will not be issued.
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