At Least 27 Dead After Hurricane Otis Hits Mexico’s Acapulco

At least 27 people have been killed after Hurricane Otis, one of the most powerful storms to ever hit Mexico, struck the Pacific beach resort of Acapulco.

Otis, with winds of 270 kilometres per hour (165 miles per hour), ripped roofs from homes and hotels, tore trees from the ground, and largely cut off communications and road links with the region.

Some hospitals were forced to evacuate patients amid flooding that inundated streets and left cars submerged in a trail of wreckage across the city of nearly 900,000 people.

“What Acapulco suffered was really disastrous,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a press conference in Mexico City on Thursday.

Many of those killed were swept away in overflowing rivers, according to authorities. Four people remain missing. The government has not said how many were injured but has declared a state of emergency in the region.

In a matter of hours, Otis intensified from a tropical storm to the most powerful category of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale before hitting land, taking authorities by surprise.

“It’s unprecedented in the country in recent times, not only because of the way it strengthened so quickly but also the magnitude of the hurricane,” Lopez Obrador said.The World Meteorological Organization described the hurricane as “one of the most rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones on record”.

JAZEERA