COYUCA DE BENITEZ, Mexico (AP) — Waters receded along Mexico’s southern Pacific coast Monday, devastating towns and killing 15 people. John struck the coast once as a hurricane and again as a tropical storm last week.
Desperate residents of the town of Coyuca de Benitez, about 56 kilometers west of the resort town of Acapulco, organized volunteers to go to remote areas to burn the bloated bodies of drowned farm animals.
The carcasses could pose a health hazard, so teams of townspeople set out with cans of diesel to help them with their grim work.
The Mexican military began delivering aid packages to families in the city hit by Hurricane Otis last year and last week – twice – by John.
Some people get so tired of the annual hurricane strikes that they almost give up.
“I don’t want to buy anything anymore if this keeps happening every year,” said Yahaira García Marín, 32, as she began cleaning up her destroyed home in Coyuca de Benitez. Around her there was little left but the shoulder-high brown spots on the wall that showed where the water reached.
García Marín had to flee at night last week with her 80-year-old grandmother. “It was terrible, we had to take what little we had and get out,” she remembers.
Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – whose last day at work was Monday – did not visit the disaster area, but he confirmed on Sunday that 15 people had died.
Officials in Guerrero state, where both Coyuca and Acapulco are located, said more than 3 feet of rain fell in the region between September 23, when John made landfall east of Acapulco as a Category 3 hurricane , and Friday. , when the rejuvenated Tropical Storm John made landfall again west of Coyuca.
That meant that in just four or five days the era received the equivalent of about 80% of the rain it would normally expect in a year.
The rain also caused landslides that collapsed houses and blocked roads in the mountainous terrain behind the coast.