Acapulco was struggling Saturday to recover from the extraordinarily powerful Hurricane Otis, which claimed 39 lives and provoked widespread power, water and telephone outages.
Acapulco was struggling Saturday to recover from the extraordinarily powerful Hurricane Otis, which claimed 39 lives and provoked widespread power, water and telephone outages.
The picturesque Mexican tourist haunt, which once lured Hollywood stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Elvis Presley, had never experienced a Category 5 hurricane like Otis, which roared ashore Wednesday and made local landmarks built over decades look like they had been bombed.
A lack of phone signal has left survivors desperate to communicate with loved ones. Some 200,000 homes were damaged, with a number of restaurants and businesses in ruins.
„We must restart the reconstruction of Acapulco as soon as possible,“ President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.
As aid finally began to arrive after the storm’s devastating landfall—initial estimates report $15 billion in damage—the government on Saturday upped the death toll from the previous report of 27.
Secretary of Security Rosa Icela Rodriguez said in a video on social media that at least 10 people remain missing, up from four previously reported.
A security force of some 17,000 has been deployed across the area after reports that supermarkets had been looted, authorities said.
