Mexican officials on Saturday raised the death toll to 39 from Hurricane Otis, which struck the country's southern Pacific Coast, including the resort city of Acapulco, on Wednesday as a powerful Category 5 storm.
The probable cause of death for the 39 was "suffocation by submersion," Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said in a recorded video message with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and posted to the platform X. She said the victims had not yet been identified and that investigations continue.
The new death toll was an increase of 12 from the initial tally of 27 announced Thursday. But the storm's human toll was becoming a point of contention as local media reported the recovery of more bodies and Lopez Obrador criticized opponents for trying to make it a political issue.
Rodriguez also said the number of missing rose to 10. Hundreds of families have been awaiting word from loved ones.
In Acapulco on Saturday, government workers and volunteers cleared streets, gas station lines wrapped around the block for what fuel was to be had, and some lucky families discovered a warehouse full of food as a more organized relief operation took shape four days after the storm hit.
Military personnel and volunteers worked along Acapulco's main tourist strip. They sliced through fallen palm trees and metal signs. Cellphone signals were partially recovered near some of the city's most luxurious hotels, and authorities brought in a charging station for people to charge their phones.
Outside tourist areas: Chaos
But on the periphery of the city, neighborhoods remained in chaos. The government presence found in the tourist center was not visible in other neighborhoods. With no cellphone signal, no water and no food, families and the elderly trudged through foot-deep mud and flooded streets to get to large warehouses full of food and began carrying away bags of food and liquids.
Aid has been slow to arrive. The Category 5 storm's destruction cut off the city of nearly 1 million people. The storm intensified so quickly on Tuesday that little to nothing had been staged in advance.
Authorities continue to search for the dead and missing. Many remained incredulous that the government's initial death toll of 27 and four missing had not risen in the past two days.
One military official, who did not want to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to media, said officials in his area had found at least six bodies and that his own unit had found one. The bodies were hard to find because they were often covered in trees and other debris, he said.
Families search for water
In another part of the city, Orlando Mendoza, 46, walked down a highway carrying two bags containing tuna, sardines, water, pasta and soup. He was bringing food to his wife and three young children.
"Even though it isn't much, it's something," he said as he walked down the winding mountain highway toward the city center.
A group of volunteers from the central state of Puebla who scraped together some money to help people in the city were handing out bags of food to families like Mendoza's gathered on the side of the highway.
Abel Montoya, 67, had been waiting in line for gasoline with hundreds of other people for an hour and a half Saturday holding an empty jug. Soldiers were overseeing the distribution of gasoline, presumably to avoid the uncontrolled ransacking of stores that happened across the city in recent days.
"I need to be able to move to search for water and ice," he said. "Now there's this shortage of food and I might even have to leave Acapulco, go to (the state capital) Chilpancingo."
Gasoline had been unavailable, not because there wasn't any, but because there was no electricity to operate the pumps.
Most families anxiously hunted for water, with some saying they were rationing their supplies. The municipal water system was out because its pumps had no power.
Officials said the military presence would grow to 15,000 in the area, and Lopez Obrador called on his armed forces to set up checkpoints in the city to avoid robberies.
Lopez Obrador said the national electric company had told him that service had resumed to 55% of the customers in the affected area, but that more than 200,000 homes and businesses remained without power.
The federal civil defense agency had tallied 220,000 homes that were damaged by the storm, he said.
