Mexico Lies In The Eye of The Storm After Hurricane Otis Struck The Nation

A man walking through palm trees slanted and broken by Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, Mexico. Photo: AP Photo/Felix Marquez

On Oct. 25, Hurricane Otis struck the city of Acapulco on the Pacific coast of Mexico, leaving the country with landslides, flooding, and devastation, becoming the second-strongest storm in Mexico's history. 

Despite meteorologists' doubts about the hurricane’s intensity, the Category 5 garnered a powerful wind speed of 165 mph and heavy rainfalls in less than two days.  The unprecedented and “rapid intensification” of the storm left houses inhabitable, powerlines severed, 39 missing and over 40 individuals dead. 

"What Acapulco suffered was really disastrous," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a press conference.  Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O estimated a cost of 61.3 billion pesos ($3.42 billion) for Acapulco’s recovery plan. However, Acapulco locals state the lack of tangible and urgent support from the government. 

"The government hasn't given us any help, not even hope," said Apolonio Maldonado, a resident of the Renacimiento neighborhood, now submerged in muddy waters. 

On a by-pass, three residents embrace, looking at the damage caused by Hurricane Otis. Photo: AP Photo/Felix Marquez

Hurricane Otis is one of many weather-related calamities that occurred in 2023, displacing multitudes of individuals and pressured national leaders to declare a state of emergency. 

The sudden spike in the frequency and intensity of such calamities caused experts to point to the record-breaking heat experiences in the Northern Hemisphere earlier this year. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), storms, such as Hurricane Otis, produce intense precipitation levels through the evaporation of large amounts of ocean water. From 1993 to 2022, the ocean has stored approximately 91 percent of greenhouse-gas-produced heat, causing frequent and heavy evaporation accumulating in the atmosphere. The occurrence of single-day precipitation reinforces the relationship between the warming of the seas and rainfall. 

“The prevalence of extreme single-day precipitation events remained fairly steady between 1910 and the 1980s but has risen substantially since then,” the United States Environmental Protection Agency reported. “The portion of the country experiencing extreme single-day precipitation events increased at a rate of about half a percentage point per decade.” 

Furthermore, researchers from Nature Scientific Reports found that rising global temperatures slant wind shear and increase speed, “allowing hurricanes to approach more rapidly.”

“Tropical storms in the Atlantic (known as “hurricanes”) and Pacific (“typhoons”) draw their energy from this abyssal heat store,” said Kevin Trenberth of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in an interview with The Economist. He concluded that the heavy rain pour could not have been produced without “human-included climate change.”

Countries labeled as the main contributors to climate change begin to reap the consequences of their actions. 

On Sept. 5, Typhoon Haiku left southern China, racing to rescue locals from 2-meter floods.  Less than a month, New Yorkers were stranded as subway and commuter rail lines were left after over 7.25 inches of rain had covered parts of Brooklyn. Both storms were preceded by India’s  Cyclone Biparjoy, which had a forecasted wind speed of 325 km, causing over 62,000 people to be evacuated. 

Yet the ramifications of the climate crisis are more intensified in geologically and environmentally susceptible to tropical storms. Small countries slated to be geologically and environmentally susceptible to tropical storms are more likely to face more significant economic and ecological damage after storms than their first-world counterparts. 

Countries already faced with national debt and poverty would shoulder excessive losses in GDP and economic development while recovering from the damages caused by hurricanes or typhoons. Following Hurricane Ivan, Grenada shelled out over 200% of its GDP to recuperate the damage caused by the storm. 

Alongside the vulnerability of storm surges caused by rising sea levels, the unequal distribution of effects caused by storms comes from disaster risk management and their preventative technologies. Despite the frequency of storms and hurricanes, the lack of information regarding the occurrence and severity of storms brings a stronger blow to nations as unexpected storms leave their government and citizens unaware and unprepared. 

“Rising seas are sinking futures,” said António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, regarding the threat of climate change as “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale.”