Hurricane Otis batters Mexico - 1st November 2023

Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico's Pacific coast with wind speeds reaching 270 kilometres an hour. The category five hurricane had a catastrophic impact on the popular tourist town of Acapulco, where it destroyed 80 percent of its hotels.

Neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city were ruined by mudslides, homes and businesses battered, water supplies cut off and there's widespread power outages. Whilst the government's deployed 17,000 troops to the area, help has been slow to arrive. Local communities have, therefore, decided to band together to help themselves.

Margarita Carmona lives in the Puerto Marques neighbourhood and is urging her neighbours to start cleaning up their homes after the category five hurricane.

Margarita Carmona: "We all agreed, we are going to unite as neighbours to pick up everything that is in the way, so that we can get through and wait for the help that may arrive."

With so much shattered glass and rubble underfoot, the work can be dangerous as residents have also lost their clothes and shoes in the storm as fisherman Julian Matadama laments.

Julian Matadama: "We are barefoot and we have nothing. We do not want to see the wounds we have on our feet because we don't want it to stop us going out to get food for our children."

Whilst the cleanup continues, many are concerned about the future and how people will survive, including local Omar Flores.

Omar Flores: "There won't be any tourists for a while. We don't know how we are going to get by. All we can think about is where we will get the money from to rebuild what we used to have."

In a city that was once the playground of Hollywood stars but has been riven by organised crime gangs for years, locals fear that it will be a long time before tourists choose to return.

Juana Flores highlights that for the moment they have to concentrate on helping themselves.

Juana Flores: "Right now we are seeing how we are going to be able to work. First and foremost, we need to fix the roof, and then with the little produce that survived, we will start working again. That's the only thing we can do."