ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) 鈥 Desperate families made missing posters Friday and joined online groups to look for loved ones out of touch since Hurricane Otis devastated the Mexican Pacific coast city of Acapulco.
Officials said they were moving in supplies and evacuating people from the devastated metropolis of 1 million people.
As cellphone service returned to some parts of the city, many residents had help from friends and relatives living in other parts of Mexico and in the United States.
Residents joined together by neighborhood using online messaging platforms. On Thursday there were some 1,000 people in 40 chats, which grew in number through the day. Late Thursday, Guerrero state Gov. Evelyn Salgado followed their lead, urging people to send messages to government WhatsApp accounts about the missing.
Norma Manzano spent a day debating whether to make a digital missing poster, like so many people have done, for her two brothers, whom she had not heard from since shortly after Otis made landfall early Wednesday.
Manzano鈥檚 brothers drove to Acapulco from Mexico City last weekend with three co-workers to build an installation for an international mining conference in a big hotel. The bachelors 鈥 31-year-old Victor Manuel Manzano L贸pez and 38-year-old Alejandro Manzano L贸pez 鈥 are hard-working jokesters, their sister said.
They were staying in an AirbnB rental in Acapulco鈥檚 Diamond Point district, a seaside area hit hard by the storm and flooding.
Entire walls of beachside high rises were ripped off. Hundreds of thousands of homes remained without electricity. People lacking even the most basic resources were emptying stores out of everything from food to toilet paper. Miguel Angel Fong, president of the Mexican Hotel Association, told The Associated Press that 80% of the city鈥檚 hotels were damaged.
Alejandro called his sister around 2 a.m. Wednesday, about an hour after Otis made landfall. She didn鈥檛 hear the call. She awoke at 3 a.m. and saw the missed call and a number of increasingly frantic messages.
鈥淗e sent me a lot of messages that it was really bad, that the windows were breaking, that they tried to put mattresses against the windows, and he told me, 鈥業鈥檓 sending you my location so that if something happens you know where we are,鈥欌 Manzano said.
That was the last message.
鈥淚 feel so powerless not being able to do anything,鈥 she said.
So she started joining groups on WhatsApp and Facebook. She joined so many that she lost count and made a poster of her brothers and their co-workers. She scours lists shared by others of people inside shelters.
So far, nothing.
鈥淚t makes me feel not alone, thinking that I鈥檓 not the only one going through this, that we have a lot of families who are worried about ours,鈥 Manzano said from her home in Toluca, west of Mexico City.
Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval announced Friday that the official number of 27 dead and four missing had not changed, but some in Mexico were skeptical of official tolls because the city remains largely cut off. Some local media have reported there were bodies in the city that had not yet been recovered.
鈥淣ature, the creator, protected us, even from the fury of the hurricane, it appears, President Andr茅s Manuel L贸pez Obrador said at his morning news briefing. 鈥淲e still have to wait to have all of the information about the missing people.鈥
鈥淏ut it appears, even though the death of any person is unfortunate, there weren鈥檛 very many,鈥 he said.
Acapulco is at the foot of steep mountains. Luxury homes and slums alike cover the hillsides with views of the glistening Pacific Ocean. Once drawing Hollywood stars for its nightlife, sport fishing and cliff diving shows, the port has in recent years fallen victim to that have sunk the city into violence, driving away many international tourists.
The Pacific storm strengthened before slamming into the coast early Wednesday, and the Mexican government deployed around 10,000 troops to deal with the aftermath. But equipment to move tons of mud and fallen trees from the streets was slow in arriving.
Acapulco鈥檚 municipal water system was down and around half a million homes lost power. L贸pez Obrador said that restoring power was a top priority, but by Thursday evening there were still 250,000 homes and businesses with no electricity.
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