As recently as Monday, Otis was expected to be a run-of-the-mill tropical storm. On Tuesday, it intensified faster than any eastern Pacific storm on record.
There were no immediate reports of deaths — but there was no communication from the areas that were hit hardest. Telephone and internet service was cut, and major roads were flooded or covered by landslides. “We just don’t know,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told journalists hours after the storm made landfall at 1:25 a.m. local time.
Otis plunged beachside hotel rooms in Acapulco into darkness. Guests threw mattresses over shattered windows and scrambled into bathrooms to protect themselves, videos shared on social media showed.Streets in the city of 1 million disappeared under heavy rains. Cars and shopping carts floated down the avenues. The wind whipped the face offAs recently as Monday, Otis was expected to be a run-of-the-mill tropical storm.
More than 504,000 customers lost power. Mexico’s state-run electricity utility put its workers on “warrior status” and restored service to nearly half of them before noon Wednesday.that stretches from Acapulco to the beach resort of Zihuatanejo, López Obrador said. The area was two weeks ago by Tropical Storm Max and was in no position to absorb more rainfall.and a local security chief less than 48 hours earlier.
Acapulco was once known as a glamorous beach resort, where John and Jackie Kennedy honeymooned and Hollywood stars vacationed. The trailer for Elvis Presley’s 1963But in recent years, organized crime groups have battled for control of the local drug trafficking and extortion rackets and it became the deadliest city in Mexico. Still, the resort, a five-hour drive from Mexico City, remains popular with Mexican tourists.On Wednesday, Acapulco was a city in shock.
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