At least 27 people are dead in Acapulco after a “nightmare” Category-5 hurricane, Mexican officials said on Thursday.
Hurricane Otis roared ashore shortly after midnight on Wednesday with 165mph winds and torrential rainfall, slamming into the coastal city where residents little time to evacuate or prepare.
Otis is the strongest ever storm to make landfall on Mexico’s west coast, descending the city into chaos, setting off looting and leaving destruction and power outages in its wake.
The images and accounts were of extensive devastation, toppled trees and power lines lying in brown floodwaters that in some areas extended for miles.
Many of the once sleek beachfront hotels in Acapulco looked like shattered hulks a day after the Category 5 storm blew out hundreds — and possibly thousands — of windows.
Otis went from a Category 1 to a Category 5 storm in only 12 hours — the fastest rate ever recorded in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The storm had lost strength by Wednesday afternoon and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved past the Guerrero state. But soon after a 4.4-magnitude earthquake shook a resort town just 120 miles north of Acapulco.
