2023-10-30 03:21:00
Death toll rises to 48 following Hurricane Otis that impacted the state of Guerreroin Mexico, the early morning of October 25. The figure was released following five people were confirmed dead this Sunday in Coyuca de Benítez, a neighboring municipality to the south of Acapulco.
A statement from the federal government indicated that there are also six people missing and more than 273 thousand homes affected, approximately. When giving an assessment of the fourth day of work in that entity, following the passage of category 5 hurricanethe government of Mexico highlighted that 80 percent of the hotel sector is damaged and that there are 600 hotels and condominiums affected.
The victim count was slow due to the telecommunications interruption and lack of energy electricity caused by the meteorological phenomenon. The statement reported that 37 transmission lines, 26 electrical substations and a generation plant are out of service, but that Half of the electricity service was restored of affected users, who were more than half a million.
Acapulco, devastated: the most shocking videos of the devastation of Hurricane Otis
Furthermore, they reported more than 10,000 electrical poles down, 120 hospitals and clinics damaged, 12 road closures due to falling trees and overflowing bodies of water, as well as 24 road collapses. According to the consulting firm Enki Research, specialized in natural phenomena, Otis leaves damages of regarding 15,000 million dollars.
Also, several media outlets reported on the appearance of what appear to be Lifeless bodies in various areas of the port.
On the other hand, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced his visit to Acapulco scheduled for this Sunday. “I send you a hug and I also warn you that I will be there with you in the followingnoon, we will see you there to do the followingnoon evaluation,” the president said on his social networks.
Claims for help in Acapulco
In a span of 12 hours, Hurricane Otis experienced a rapid intensificationgoing from a tropical storm to reaching the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds of 250 kilometers per hour, leaving a wave of destruction in the city of almost 780,000 inhabitants that lives off the tourism sector.
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The governor of Guerrero, Evelyn Salgado Pineda, reported through her X account, formerly Twitter: “We are advancing in the efficient distribution of the humanitarian aid, provide pertinent support and advance in the restoration of services.”
After Otis passed, shops and supermarkets were looted by residents, desperate for food and water.
Aid from the government and private organizations began to be distributed on Friday followingnoon, following the Acapulco airport was opened and traffic on the roads was streamlined. Nevertheless, the process progresses slowlyand in some nearby areas, the community demands assistance and organizes to clean up the destruction of their businesses and homes.
“We have not seen anything from the authorities, that they come to support us“he told the agency AFP Miguel Antraca, 60 years old, who went to a beach area to see his small business in ruins, who experienced other cyclones, but nothing like this, “hurricanes were smaller before,” he says.
Emergency Responses and Medical Assistance After Hurricane Otis
The director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Zoe Robledo, reported on the installation of an 80-bed mobile hospital, as well as 29 air transfers of patients in critical condition in response to the effects of Hurricane Otis. In addition to providing free medicines, they have been deployed in different parts of the state 26 mobile medical units.
In the first half of 2023, natural disasters cost more than US$120 billion globally
Also from IMSS, they reported that a team of Cuban doctors specialists in traumatology, internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, dermatology and family joined the contingents of support to serve the affected population of Guerrero.
Likewise, the government of Mexico City installed a service, link and contact module, with free internet, so that the inhabitants of Acapulco can receive guidance and communicate with their relatives in the capital or in other parts of the country.
Otis broke the intensification record
The hurricane intensification was one of the fastest that meteorologists have recorded so far: the maximum speed of its winds increased 185 km/h in 24 hours. Just another storm, the Hurricane Patricia in 2015surpassed the rapid intensification of Otis in the Eastern Pacific records, with an increase of 193 km/h in 24 hours.
Usually regarding 24 hours are enough for businesses, houses, hotels to be protected and for residents to get food and water, but this hurricane caught meteorologists and authorities off guard. Otis got stronger very quickly on Tuesday because he “made the most of a warm ocean area” of regarding 31°C, more than enough to fuel a monster storm, said Brian McNoldy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami.
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Tropical storms usually take several days to become powerful hurricanes, but eventually climate change Human-induced rapid intensification is becoming a more common phenomenon, said Suzana Camargo, a hurricane expert and professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“A nightmare scenario”were the words they used to warn Otis, in the National Hurricane Center. The last great precedent of a phenomenon with this level of damage in Mexico was the Hurricane Katrinawhich occurred on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in August 2005.
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