[
]
 "Hurricane Beryl, Beryl, Cyclone")
Representative Image: The rain also set off landslides that collapsed houses and blocked roads. (Photo: Reuters)
Along Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, floodwaters receded on Monday, leaving behind devastated towns and 15 dead, after John struck the coast once as a hurricane and again as tropical storm last week.
Desperate residents in the town of Coyuca de Benitez, about 35 miles west of the resort city of Acapulco, organised volunteers to go to outlying areas to burn the bloated bodies of farm animals that drowned.
Click here to connect with us on WhatsApp
The carcasses could become a health risk, so teams of townspeople set out with cans of diesel to help them in their grim work.
The Mexican army began delivering aid packages to families in the town that were hit last year by Hurricane Otis and then last week — twice — by John.
Some are becoming so tired of the repeated hurricane impacts every year they have almost given up.
“I don’t want to buy anything anymore, if this is going to continue happening every year,” said Yahaira Garcia Marin (32) as she began to clear out her shattered house in Coyuca de Benitez.
Around her, little was left except the shoulder-high brown marks on the wall showing where the water reached.
Garcia Marin had to flee in the night last week with her 80-year-old grandmother. “It was terrible, we had to grab what little we had and get out,” she recalled.
Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — whose last day in office was Monday — has not visited the disaster zone, but he confirmed on Sunday that 15 people had died.
Officials in Guerrero state, where both Coyuca and Acapulco are located, said more than three feet of rain had fallen in the region between September 23 when John made landfall to the east of Acapulco as a Category 3 hurricane, and Friday, when the rejuvenated Tropical Storm John came ashore again to the west of Coyuca.
That meant the region got the equivalent of about 80 per cent of the rain it would normally expect to see in a year, in just four or five days.
The rain also set off landslides that collapsed houses and blocked roads in the mountainous terrain behind the coast.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Published: Oct 01 2024 | 9:24 AM IST
