ACAPULCO: Looting ravaged the Mexican city of Acapulco after the iconic beach resort was hammered this week by Hurricane Otis, a record-breaking storm that killed at least 27 people and left thousands of residents struggling to get food and water.

Otis pounded Acapulco with winds of 165 miles per hour early on Wednesday, flooding the city, tearing roofs from homes, stores and hotels, submerging vehicles, and severing communications as well as road and air connections.

The cost of devastation left by the Category 5 storm was estimated at billions of dollars, and over 8,000 armed forces members were sent to help the stricken port recover.

“Right now, money’s no use to us because there’s nothing to buy, everything’s been looted,” 57-year-old Acapulco resident Rodolfo Villagomez said after Otis tore through the city. “It was total chaos. You could hear it here hissing like a bull.” On Thursday evening, people carried off goods including food, water and toilet paper from stores. “We came to get food, because we don’t have any,” a woman said.

“There were acts of looting in some places because there was an emergency,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday, urging residents not to take advantage of the situation. Elsewhere, household detritus was littered among ruined deck chairs and jumbles of mangled trees outside wrecked homes.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2023