Chaos as floods submerge Acapulco, death toll rises

A man looks at his car trapped in floodwaters in Chailpanchingo, Mexico, yesterday.

Reuters/Acapulco

Mexico’s famous beach resort of Acapulco was in chaos yesterday as hotels rationed food for thousands of stranded tourists and floodwaters swallowed homes and cars after some of the worst storm damage in decades killed at least 55 people across the country.

Television footage showed Acapulco’s international airport terminal waist deep in water and workers wading out to escape floods that have prevented some 40,000 visitors from leaving and blocked one of the main access routes to the city with mud.

A torrential, three-day downpour cut off several roads into the Pacific resort of 750,000 people, which was a magnet for Hollywood stars in its heyday but had the highest murder rate in Mexico last year amid a surge in drug gang violence.

The flooding has disrupted deliveries of supplies, piling fresh misery on a city heavily dependent on tourist spending.

The entrance to a main hillside tunnel into Acapulco was completely blocked with mud.

The heavy rains were spawned by two major storms that converged on Mexico from the Pacific and the Gulf, triggering flash floods that washed away homes and landslides in eastern Mexico.

“They’ve started to ration food here,” said Pedro de la Torre, a 53-year-old graphic designer from Mexico City stranded in a large international hotel in Acapulco.

“People are starting to get annoyed. I lost two cars, total write-offs.”

Outside the hotel, guests waded to their waterlogged vehicles in the hope of recovering whatever they could. Much of Acapulco’s upscale Diamante district was flooded. Since the weekend, the rains have killed at least 55 people in the states of Veracruz, Guerrero, Puebla, Hidalgo, Michoacan and Oaxaca, according to regional emergency services.

Guerrero, which is home to Acapulco, was the hardest hit. At least 34 of the deaths came Guerrero, local emergency services said. Some streets in the state capital Chilpancingo became rivers of mud. Local mayor Mario Moreno said the city had “collapsed.”

“The panorama is one of devastation,” said Alejandro Hernandez, a 40-year-old landscape gardener on vacation from Mexico City, holed up in an Acapulco hotel with his wife and three-year-old daughter. “The hotel is no longer functioning as a business. The staff is starting to leave. They have closed the front desk, switched off the computers,” he said. “All they have done is caused panic by saying they are going to start rationing, turn off power and cut water.”

President Enrique Pena Nieto said via Twitter he had ordered a “house by house” census in Guerrero and told the federal transport ministry to establish an air bridge to Mexico City.