2023-10-28 07:52:02
ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — In Acapulco, a city without water, electricity or gasoline, where since Hurricane Otis desperate people have been allowed, and even encouraged, to take essential items from damaged businesses, the State police Raúl Gallardo guarded a mountain of surpluses.
Gallardo explained the distinction that authorities have made — in some cases — to determine what can be taken and what ends up in your pile.
People can grab “whatever can be consumed,” such as water, tuna or mayonnaise, but they are not allowed to take out expensive items, such as appliances, he said, turning to point to the refrigerators behind him. “What is not in the basket of basic products, cannot be carried.”
Despite the government’s promises that help was on the way in a big way, people didn’t wait.
Desperate residents of Acapulco emptied the city’s largest stores in three days. It was not an isolated phenomenon in a specific neighborhood nor did it take place under the cover of darkness, but rather it was widespread and in full view of the authorities, who recognized that they did not have the resources nor, in most cases, the will to intervene.
This is, in part, the result of a delayed government reaction to the historically rapid strengthening of a meteor that no one anticipated would go from a tropical storm to a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane in just 12 hours. It is also a continuation of federal authorities’ strategy of addressing problems — drug violence, natural disasters — with personnel, but not necessarily the tools to resolve the situation.
At least 27 people died in the storm, but hundreds more were still searching for their loved ones Friday.
Gallardo was evasive about whether the items he and other police officers and National Guard soldiers were guarding in a parking lot at a major intersection had been seized or abandoned because of their weight.
There were cases and cases of beer, a large purple recliner, a rolling desk chair, a pink seat, and bottles and bottles of scotch.
The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, gently reprimanded the population not to overdo it on Friday.
It is not that the store shelves were empty, it is that, in some cases, the shelves themselves and the stairs that allowed employees to replenish the products on them, had disappeared.
All over the city you could see people pushing shopping carts full of products. There were large items tied to the roofs of the cars. A man on a motorcycle pulled a makeshift sled loaded with what appeared to be bedding down a muddy street.
There was no gasoline, not because there was no fuel, but because there was no electricity to run the pumps. On Friday, hundreds of people crowded outside a supermarket in a working-class neighborhood on the coast where men broke one of the pumps and were filling empty plastic bottles that people were carrying.
Most families were anxiously searching for water and some said they were rationing their supply. The municipal supply was paralyzed because the pumping system did not have electricity.
Along the tourist city’s boardwalk, department stores and grocery stores were devastated, first by the hurricane and then by residents. And if government help, in the form of loans, does not materialize soon, many businesses will have to close.
López Obrador announced on Friday that his government is working on a proposal to financially support the hotel and commercial sector that suffered damage to more than 80% of the infrastructure.
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