Hurricane Otis, the fastest intensifying hurricane on record in the Eastern Pacific, has left Acapulco's poorest residents feeling abandoned as they struggle to recover from the devastation. The Category 5 hurricane destroyed homes, claimed lives, and left many without basic necessities.
ACAPULCO , Mexico — Estela Sandoval Díaz was huddled in her tiny concrete bathroom, sure these were the final moments of her life, when Hurricane Otis ripped off her tin roof.
It’s a sentiment that has long simmered in the city, but has grown in the aftermath of Otis as many accuse the government of leaving them to fend for themselves. Their home was surrounded by ankle-deep putrid water. Sandoval, her husband and two neighbors were sleeping under a sheet of metal propped against the house. She picked through scraps in her bedroom, taking note of what was ruined and planning how to ration water and gas for cooking.
“They don’t care about people’s pain, they want to hurt us. What they want is for there to be a lot of death so they can blame us," López Obrador said.Otis intensified within hours from a tropical storm into the strongest hurricane to hit the Eastern Pacific coast, taking many by surprise. Many experts attributed the unanticipated burst of force to the effects of climate change, with warming seas acting as fuel for storms like Otis.
“When you’re completely enveloped by something like this — so fragile, so violent — you ask yourself, when are they going to come?” she said.Following the storm, the city descended into a state of lawlessness. Trees and rubble blocked the main road for a day, and no cellphone signal left its 1 million people effectively cut off from the world.
Residents like Natividad Reynoso, whose business selling plants to hotels was wiped out by the storm, worried it would mean the long-term destruction of Acapulco’s main economic engine.By the weekend, cellphone signal was being restored, aid was being distributed and the military cleared trees and rubble from the city center, a stark contrast with poor areas where chaos still reigned.
García Ramirez and other fishermen pulled the boats onto the city’s Manzanilla Beach when Otis was still a Category 2 storm. A friend was watching over a boat 20 meters up the beach. Shani Louk, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas' October 7 terrorist attacks, has been confirmed dead, according to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.First snowfall in southern Ontario, these areas will see highest potential
Hurricane Otis Acapulco Devastation Category 5 Abandoned Recovery Eastern Pacific
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