YETLA, Mexico (CN) — Hurricane Otis flooded Raúl Olea’s home with waist-high mud when it struck Mexico’s southern coast as a Category 5 storm in late October. He and his family stood in the noxious muck for seven hours before the waters receded.
“I had a fungal infection in my feet, the skin split open,” said Olea, 48, as he and his family continued to haul mud out of their bedrooms by the wheelbarrow a week after the storm passed. “I’m still scared to touch that water.”
Up the hill from Olea’s riverside house in the small town of Yetla, about an hour northwest of Acapulco, Martín Paredes’ home stood open to the unforgiving afternoon sun overhead. With sustained winds of over 165 mph and gusts of over 205 mph, Otis tore the sheet metal roof completely off of the walls.
“The storm put us out on the street,” said Paredes, 83, while his sons and daughters pointed to similar damages to their own homes on the hillside. “We lost everything. Even our clothes.”
Otis wasn’t the first hurricane to hit Yetla, and past experiences have taught residents what to expect.
“When Pauline hit, it flooded and they never sent any help,” said Paredes’ daughter Elma, 53, referring to a Category 4 storm that struck the region in 1997. “They haven’t sent anyone as of yet.”
Down by the river, Olea also lamented that the majority of the attention paid to this disaster has been concentrated on the nearby popular tourist destination.
“The news just focuses on Acapulco, Acapulco, Acapulco — nothing about here,” he said.
The worries and frustrations of the residents of Yetla represent those of rural communities across the swath of destruction Otis left in its wake to the north and west of what was one of Mexico’s prized beach hot spots.
This area includes around 800,000 affected residents, just under the population of the Acapulco metropolitan area.
The government has not been completely absent. As desperate residents invited any passing outsider to witness the damage to their homes, census takers from Mexico’s federal welfare department made visits to register households for indemnity payments.
The federal government is offering initial payments of 8,000 pesos (US $456) to affected residents, and will allocate other payments based on need.
Yetla was one of the hardest hit communities seen by census coordinator Janitzi Carvajal and her team of surveyors.
“All communities that are on hills or next to rivers or gullies were the most affected,” she said.
Her mission reveals the extent of the mistrust between the government and the people it is ostensibly there to serve. Several Yetla residents told Courthouse News that they viewed the census as a means for the government to shirk its promise to provide support. Others complained that census takers did not accept the damages to their homes as attributable to the hurricane or that they were ignored completely.
Likewise, there is distrust of residents on the part of the public servants.
“There are obviously those who want to abuse the census and do it twice or in houses that aren’t even being lived in,” said Carvajal. “With all this desperation, we all talk about our needs and we all say that the government isn’t coming, it’s not helping me. But help has to flow little by little.”
The issue, however, is not one of degree but one of kind, according to Joana Gaia, a clinical assistant professor of management science and systems at the University at Buffalo. While things like clearing roads and restoring power — for which Mexico’s military and electricity commission were dispatched immediately — are essential, a damage survey is not needed in the first days after a disaster like this.
“The census is going to do damage assessment, it’s a preparation for long-term recovery, and you can’t address long-term recovery until you address short-term needs,” she said in a phone interview.
Mitigation efforts like getting hospitals up and running and providing food, water and first aid are more useful in the first few days after a catastrophic event like Otis, she said. The federal government’s response to the storm appears to be conducted with long-term recovery and public relations damage control in mind.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has accused the media of overstating the seriousness of the situation, adding the tragedy to the litany of other polarized subjects he uses to defend his reputation in his daily morning press conferences.
“That’s where the biggest disconnect is, you have the government agencies focusing on image, on a PR perspective and long-term impact, but there’s really nobody taking care of the short-term and immediate needs,” Gaia said.
The military blocked civil society and other outsiders from entering Acapulco for the first five days after the storm. Since they’ve been allowed to enter, organizations have worked tirelessly to address these immediate needs.
The Mexican Red Cross has delivered basic food, hygiene and medical supplies. The food relief organization World Central Kitchen is currently providing 30,000 meals a day and plans to double that number in the coming days, a representative told Courthouse News.
Still, those efforts are concentrated in Acapulco. The disaster response organization Medical Impact recently sent medics to Yetla and other affected rural communities to provide first aid and help mitigate the effects of a coming wave of infectious disease outbreaks.
But beyond that, Yetla residents are not hopeful they’ll receive much more help from the Mexican government.
“Authorities are going to focus on tourist areas, but not so much outside of the city, up in the mountains, areas that aren’t as economically viable,” said Eddie Mendoza, director of Mexico operations at Direct Relief, another organization providing medical assistance in the area.
Meanwhile, food prices have spiked in the wake of the storm. The price of a five-gallon jug of potable water has more than doubled, Yetla residents complained. The cost of tortillas and tomatoes has almost doubled.
Residents who have lived through something like this in the past doubt that the government will come through for them in a significant way.
“We hope that the government will support us,” said Paredes as he looked up at the sky through the bare slats that once held up his roof. “But who knows what they’re thinking.”
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