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

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.

Fears are growing for the four people missing in Acapulco after a “nightmare” Category-5 hurricane ripped through the city.

At least 27 people are dead and four people are missing after Hurricane Otis brought 165mph winds and torrential rainfall to Acapulco on Wednesday.

Flora Contreras Santos, a housewife who lives on the outskirts of the city, told of her fear after her three-year-old neighbor was swept away from her mother in a mudslide.

“The mountain came down on them. The mud took her from the mother’s arms,” she told the Associated Press. “We need help, the mother is in bad shape and we can’t find the girl.”

Meanwhile, Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda announced the establishment of a WhatsApp line to help people contact their families after communications went down in Acapulco on Wednesday.

“Countrymen and women, we know that, as a result of the damage to the satellite network, contact with our families is limited and in some cases has not been possible. Therefore, at this time I make the following contacts available to you exclusively to send messages via WhatsApp, in order to facilitate the immediate search for your families,” she said in a post on X.

The “insurable” loss from Hurricane Otis could total up to $15 billion, according to risk analytics and modelling firm CoreLogic.

The firm estimated that losses could be between $10 and $15 billion after 165mph winds destroyed many buildings in Acapulco.

The estimate does not include business interruptions or costs associated with additional living expenses.

Approximately 80 per cent of the city’s hotels were damaged by the storm, according to Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda.

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.

Footage shows the damage caused to the control tower of the Acapulco International Airport after Hurricane Otis ripped through the city on Wednesday.

The video, posted to X, showed the airport’s control tower almost completely destroyed after 165mph winds battered Acapulco on Wednesday.

The hurricane also destroyed many homes, as well 80 per cent of the city’s hotels and all the city’s power lines.

Otis is the strongest ever storm to make landfall on Mexico’s west coast. The hurricane underwent explosive intensification from a Category 1 to Category 5 in just 12 hours, catching forecasters by surprise. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) described it as a “nightmare scenario” for the region.

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.

People are fleeing from Acapulco after a “catastrophic” Category 5 hurricane left hundreds of thousands of residents without homes and electricity.

At least 27 people are dead and four people are missing after Hurricane Otis brought 165mph winds and torrential rainfall to Acapulco on Wednesday.

The hurricane has seen 80 per cent of the city’s hotels destroyed, while all the city’s power lines were destroyed, leaving residents without cell phone service and water.

There is also widespread looting in the city after people were left without basic resources. “You can’t buy anything in Acapulco, not even if you want to,” one resident said.

As of Friday, large areas of Acapulco remain cut off without aid or assistance. The governor of the State of Guerrero, Evelyn Salgado, has said that 30 buses per day will be provided to evacuate tourists.

“The hotel told us that it could no longer guarantee water, food or safety,” said the Chavez family, who were staying in the Emporio hotel in Acapuulco.

“There are too many people trying to get out,” the family added. They said cab drivers are charging $25 per passenger for the journey.

Frustrations are growing at the slow government response to Hurricane Otis.

Survivors of the ‘catastrophic” storm fear the government response may focus on repairing infrastructure for the city’s economic engine of tourism instead of helping the neediest.

Many of Acapulco’s one million residents have been left without homes or electricity after 165mph winds battered the city on Wednesday.

People are also lacking the most basic of resources, the AP reported, with widespread looting in the city for resources such as toilet roll.

“They’re going to close these stores and that hurts Acapulco,” a labourer in the city told AP.

Meanwhile, Acapulco’s police chief Luis Enrique Vázquez Rodríguez admitted there is little that can be done to stop people from looting local stores.

“We don’t have the capacity to stop looting because there’s so many people,” he said. “This is a completely extraordinary situation.”

Some residents fear it could take a year for Acapulco to recover; with no power, gasoline, little cell coverage and hotels wrecked by the hurricane.

But some residents were more optimistic. Marketing expert Antonio Esparza said the hurricane may improve Acapulco because it may “force the government to pay attention.”

Otis is the strongest ever storm to make landfall on Mexico’s west coast. The storm destroyed 80 per cent of the city’s hotels and all of the city’s power lines, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and cell phone service.

As of Thursday, there were 250,000 homes and businesses still without electricity.

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.