WORLD
Hurricane Otis death toll rises to 48, missing now number 36 as search and recovery work continues
Baku, October 30, AZERTAC
At least 48 people died when Category 5 Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, most of them in Acapulco, as the death toll continued to climb and families buried loved ones, AP reported citing the Mexican authorities.
Mexico’s civil defense agency said in a statement that 43 of the dead were in the resort city of Acapulco and five in nearby Coyuca de Benitez. Guerrero state’s governor had earlier raised the number of missing to 36 from 10 a day earlier. The death toll increased after authorities had raised it to 39 on Saturday.
In Acapulco, families held funerals for the dead on Sunday and continued the search for essentials while government workers and volunteers cleared streets clogged with muck and debris from the powerful Category 5 hurricane.
During a short time outside the morgue Sunday morning, at least a half-dozen families arrived, some looking for relatives; other identifying bodies and still others giving statements to authorities.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Saturday that his opponents are trying to inflate the toll to damage him politically, but with hundreds of families still awaiting word from loved ones it was likely to keep rising.
Otis roared ashore early Wednesday with devastating 165 mph (266 kph) winds after strengthening so rapidly that people had little time to prepare.
Many people rode out on boats what had started as a tropical storm and in just 12 hours powered up into a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane.
The military presence swelled to 15,000 in the area. López Obrador had called on the armed forces to set up checkpoints in the city to deter looting and robbery.
The federal civil defense agency tallied 220,000 homes that were damaged by the storm, he said.