Hurricane Otis – latest: Fears grow for people still missing in Acapulco after storm killed 27

At least 27 people are dead and four are missing 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 had little time to evacuate or prepare.

“Unfortunately, we received word from the state and city governments that 27 people are dead and four are missing,” said Secretary of State for Security Rosa Icela Rodriguez, according to AFP.

Louise Boyle reports:

In the wake of Hurricane Otis, scientists were trying to piece together how everyone had been caught so off-guard, even as forecasting models have gotten better in the past few years.

“The models completely blew it,” MIT atmospheric sciences professor Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert, told The AP.

A rapid analysis, from an international team of scientists at the ClimaMeter group, reported on Thursday that the climate crisis contributed to make the rainfall in Hurricane Otis more intense.

The rapid and unexpected intensification of Otis left the scientific community in “awe”, said Stavros Dafis, a research and development specialist at the Data4Risk company in France and a research associate at the National Observatory of Athens.

Record-breaking ocean temperatures are fuelling stronger and more destructive cyclones in general. This heat is being caused by a fossil-fuel-driven climate crisis with El Nino, a cyclical weather pattern, layered on top.

Hurricane Otis’s surprise rapid intensification from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 12 hours caught not only researchers off-guard, but also the tourists visiting Acapulco earlier this week.

In the wake of the monster storm — which killed 27 people and left four others missing — the Mexican government has had its hands full managing clean-up efforts and the evacuation of tourists left in the blown-out hulls of hotels in the city.

Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado said her office is “supporting tourists” with “30 to 40 trucks that are outside hotels to evacuate (visitors) to other areas free of charge,” according to CNN.

Approximately 80 per cent of the city’s hotels were damaged by the storm, according to Ms Salgado.

A video captured the destruction left by Hurricane Otis when it made landfall in Acapulco, Mexico.

The footage, shot from a car driving down a city street, shows blown out windows, rubble, and the cracked and damage exteriors of buildings left in the storm’s wake.

The photos show the towering apartment complex prior to the hurricane’s arrival sporting rows of gleaming, pristine windows. The second photo, taken after the storm’s arrival, shows the extent of the damage done to the new build. Nearly all of the windows have been completely blown out.

It is unclear how much of the interiors of the apartments were finished when the storm hit, but it is likely the interiors were also soaked by rainwater and subject to more than 150mph winds at the time of the storm’s arrival.

Hurricane Otis made landfall on Wednesday, battering the Pacific-coast city of Acapulco, Mexico with Category 5 winds.

The hurricane was notable not just for its rapid intensification from a Category 1 to a Category 5 storm in just 12 hours, but also for where it hit; hurricanes rarely make landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

The last hurricane to hit on the Pacific coast within 50 miles of Acapulco was the Category 1 Hurricane Max in 2017, according to NOAA data.

“It’s very rare for intense storms to make landfall in Mexico’s eastern Pacific side,” Suzana Camargo, hurricane expert and professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told CNN.

In 2021, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration cut funding to the nation’s Natural Disaster Fund, which was established to help pay for emergency relief and disaster response efforts following major incidents.

Two years later, Mexico is facing the partial destruction of a major city due to Hurricane Otis, and has been forced to respond without its disaster funding pool intact.

Mr López Obrador justified the cut at the time by claiming it was “an instrument riddled with corruption,” and whose funds did not “reach the people.”

The fund was at one time considered one of the world’s most advanced financial instruments for responding to disasters, according to The New York Times.

Hurricane Otis was notable for catching researchers off-guard with its rapid intensification from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 storm in just under 12 hours.

Unfortunately, the climate crisis may make such events more frequent.

A recent study published in Nature’s journal Scientific Reports found that tropical storms forming in the Atlantic intensified nearly 29% more quickly on average between 2001 and 2020 than similar storms did 30 years earlier.

Hurricanes intensify over warm water — as Hurricane Otis did off the coast of Acapulco just before it made landfall — and the climate crisis is the leading contributor to warming global water temperatures.

The Earth’s oceans have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the heat created by the human burning of fossil fuels, driving global temperatures to record highs.

While the climate crisis may not necessarily cause more hurricanes, it is making them stronger and more unpredictable.

Jim Cantore, a meteorologist who has spent decades covering hurricanes on the ground for the Weather Channel, said he “never saw it coming” while discussing the intensity of Hurricane Otis.

The hurricane underwent rapid intensification from a Category 1 to Category 5 storm in just under 12 hours, after which it hit Acapulco and killed 27 people.

Footage from the city show portions of it in ruins. Buildings crumbled and windows were blown out of storefronts, businesses, and residences.