The step of Otis This Wednesday in the State of Guerrero has left 27 dead and 4 missing. The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, stated this Tuesday at the Government’s morning conference that they are waiting for more information to make a complete assessment of the devastation caused by the category 5 hurricane – the maximum in the Saffir-Simpson scale – which fully impacted Acapulco.
The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has offered his condolences to the affected families and has reported that one of the deceased was a member of the Army. “Yesterday the Commander of the Military Zone in Acapulco told us that an element of the Army, while being free in his house, a fence fell on him,” he lamented. Of the four missing, three are Navy agents, the other military body deployed to help in the rescue and evacuation tasks.
The most significant material damage occurred at Regional General Hospital Number 1, which had to transfer 200 patients to other medical centers in the area. The Renacimiento General Hospital suffered flooding on its ground floor and is inoperative, although authorities hope to have it operational again within 24 hours. The General Hospital of Acapulco, known as “El Quemado”, is now operating normally.
The governor of Guerrero, Evelyn Salgado, intervened in the conference by telephone to report that the hurricane affected 80% of the hotels in Acapulco, as informed by the municipal president. In addition, the State will provide a service to tourists stranded in the area to be able to leave the State. “We want to tell visitors that today we started with 30 or 40 trucks outside the hotels to carry out the evacuation, free of charge,” the president assured.
The president, who traveled to the coastal city to personally see the damage, has emphasized that “we must take into account” that the damage has not only occurred in the tourist center of the town, but also in the “rural area of Acapulco” has also been affected.
The late damage assessment is due to the impact on the electricity supply and mobile network, which left Acapulco without electricity and completely cut off from communication. The strong winds of more than 260 kilometers per hour from the Category 5 hurricane brought down 58 high voltage towers, causing a massive blackout suffered by more than 500,000 users. The Federal Electricity Commission reported that in a few hours it had managed to restore service to 40% of those affected, in its latest report published on Wednesday. This Thursday, 1,320 electricians are in Guerrero to restore energy to the city.
One of the big problems derived from the rains of Otis was the rise of the Papagayo River, which cut off the circulation of the Sol Highway in both directions. The flooded asphalt made it impossible to get from Mexico City to the coastal city, a difficulty that López Obrador himself experienced when he traveled to the affected area and that was recorded by the media. MX News Central. Hours later, the Army’s actions with heavy machinery managed to restore traffic..
Acapulco was also completely cut off by air. The Acapulco International Airport is devastated, with the windows of the control tower broken, the headquarters destroyed and the counter area flooded. Secretary Rodríguez has reported that flights to the Acapulco terminal will remain suspended until further notice.
Otis has surprised meteorologists and scientists by the speed with which it intensified in the Pacific. In just 12 hours, it went from being a tropical storm to a hurricane of maximum intensity, which impacted Acapulco early Wednesday morning with torrential rains and winds of more than 260 kilometers per hour. Pending the complete balance of human and material losses, Otis It has been the most intense storm to hit Guerrero, one of the poorest states in Mexico, in the last 30 years.
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