By Climate Spotlight
As of Wednesday, at least 66 fatalities and 75 missing persons are reported linked to the floods that inundated central and eastern Mexico last week. Almost 200 communities in the Hidalgo central mountainous region remain isolated.
A week after the floods, the stench of uncollected decaying bodies begins to fill the air of the city of Poza Rica, where labor continues even as some streets remain submerged under three feet of water and mud, many of them covered by an additional six feet of debris.
The Government of Mexico, led by the widely popular President Claudia Sheinbaum, is being called out for not properly warning residents of the area about the impending disaster. President Sheinbaum admitted the country needs to review river maintenance and emergency protocols once the dust clears, to determine “what worked, and what we need to improve.” She explained that alert systems for such events, such as this historic flood, differ from hurricane warnings.
Residents, however, believe that many people died because they were not given ample notice.
“They didn’t really warn us,” one resident of Poza Rica told reporters.
The remnants of Hurricane Priscilla and Tropical Storm Raymond dumped torrential rains on Mexico beginning on October 6. These triggered the catastrophic flooding and landslides across five states: Veracruz, Hidalgo, Puebla, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí.
