It made landfall near the resort town of Acapulco.
Otis had strengthened rapidly, going from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just 12 hours on Tuesday.ACAPULCO, Guerrero — Hurricane Otis ripped across Mexico’s southern Pacific coast as a powerful Category 5 storm early Wednesday, tearing through buildings in the resort city of Acapulco, sending sheets of earth down steep mountainsides and leaving large swaths of the southwestern state of Guerrero without power or cellphone service.
Flor Campos had been trudging through mud for more than an hour along a highway outside Acapulco on Wednesday morning before she peeled off her shoes, worried she'd lose them in the muck. 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.
By late Wednesday afternoon, Otis' winds had dropped to 35 mph as the storm dissipated over the mountains of southern Mexico. Remnants of the storm were still expected to dump heavy rains on the area through Thursday, however, with the possibility of flash flooding and, in mountainous areas, mudslides, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
On the outskirts of Acapulco on Wednesday, highway workers looked on helplessly without the heavy machinery needed to clear debris from the roadway. They warned the road could give way at any time because of the rain-softened ground beneath. Bridges in some areas had collapsed, and trees leaned almost horizontally across the highway, not because they were uprooted, but because the earth they grew on had slid down the slope.
Otis is stronger than Hurricane Pauline, which hit Acapulco in 1997, López Obrador said. Pauline destroyed swaths of the city and killed more than 200 people. Hundreds of others were injured in flooding and mudslides.
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