Hurricane Otis slammed Mexico's southern Pacific coast as a powerful and dangerous Category 5 hurricane Wednesday, October 25, unleashing massive flooding in the resort city of Acapulco, sending sheets of earth down steep mountainsides, and leaving large swaths of the state of Guerrero without power or cellphone service.
While little is known about possible deaths or the full extent of the damage – the main highway into Acapulco was impassable – experts are calling Otis the strongest storm in history to make landfall along the Eastern Pacific Coast.
Acapulco's Diamond Zone, an oceanfront area replete with hotels, restaurants and other tourist attractions, appeared to be mostly underwater in television footage shared online Wednesday afternoon, with boulevards and bridges completely hidden by an enormous lake of brown water.
Large buildings had their walls and roofs partially or completely ripped off. Dislodged solar panels, cars and debris littered the lobby of one severely damaged hotel. People wandered up to their waists in water in some areas, while on other less-flooded streets soldiers shoveled rubble and fallen palm fronds from the pavement.
By late Wednesday afternoon, Otis had weakened to below tropical depression strength and was dissipating over the mountains, yet many on the coast were left reeling.
On Tuesday, Otis took many by surprise when it rapidly strengthened from a tropical storm to a powerful Category 5 as it tore along the coast. Researchers tracking the storm told The Associated Press that the storm broke records for how quickly it intensified, at a time when climate change has exacerbated devastating weather events like this one.
Acapulco, Tecpan and other towns along the Costa Grande in Guerrero were hit hard, said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He said conditions were so bad that communication with the area had been "completely lost."