His long-term plan, though, is to return to the sea, where he has labored since he was 12, starting his nautical career as a helper on Acapulco’s signature glass-bottom boats. He was hoping to score alternative work on a cleanup brigade. He lost his source of employment and almost lost his life. The experience clearly traumatized Avila. They made their way to the clubhouse, where injured and shocked crew members waited out the storm. Once off the boat, they huddled together and trudged on foot against the gale and airborne debris. The three managed to leap one by one from the stricken vessel as it bounced in 15-foot waves, to a pier - dreading that they would be tossed into the water, crushed and drowned. “Then my colleague yelled: ‘It’s time to react! The boat is going to sink! We have to go’!” “I was frozen in fear,” Avila recalled of the moment before the three abandoned the boat that they were trying to safeguard. He and the captain of the yacht on which he worked, along with a fellow deckhand, managed a harrowing flight from the yacht club through hurricane hell. As Otis slashed the coast, some crew members lost their lives or went missing trying to save the yachts.Īmong those who narrowly escaped is Leonel Avila, 20. A key responsibility is to ensure that the vessels are safe during periodic storms. Hundreds of locally based captains and crews are tasked with caring for the multimillion-dollar craft. “No one did.”Īcapulco’s marinas are home to many pleasure boats of owners who live elsewhere. “We never imagined this,” Proal said, still in disbelief at the magnitude of destruction. About 85% of the 350 boats at the club were sunk or damaged, said the commodore, Juan Emilio Proal, as he escorted a visitor along water’s edge, in full view of the cemetery of luxury vessels swaying in the bay. Storm surges tore 20-ton sections of pier from their moorings and tossed them onto the shore. Adrift offshore were a plethora of stricken yachts, some overturned, others displaying deep gashes masts, motors and radio equipment were squished together with coconuts, fishing lines, palm fronds and other maritime detritus. Otis didn’t discriminate among rich and poor.Ī week after the tempest, the anchorage of the Acapulco Yacht Club still looked like it had suffered intense bombardment. That’s bad news for citizens who rely on dollars. The Mexican peso is one of the world’s strongest currencies. That’s bad news for people who rely on dollars sent from the U.S. Unlike Olivares’ facility, many of Acapulco’s large luxury hotels need near-complete reconstruction that will drag on well beyond the full restoration of power and other services. Acapulco is not just for rich people or movie stars. “We have seen the same families here for generations. “Right now we have no water or power,” said César Olivares, who runs a budget 10-room hotel close to Caletilla Beach, a popular destination for working-class vacationers who can rent a room for $25 a night or so. The upcoming peak holiday season appears a near-total write-off. Its sudden fury left authorities, residents and tourists with little time to prepare as Otis plowed a broad swath of destruction. And it hit Acapulco head-on, picking up intensity over warm offshore waters with stunning velocity - wind speeds increasing by 115 miles an hour during a 24-hour period. Otis is the strongest storm on record to have ever battered Mexico’s Pacific Coast, scientists say. This is the grim reality of Acapulco more than two weeks after Hurricane Otis - packing Category 5 winds of more than 165 miles an hour - ripped through the fabled Pacific resort and wrought unprecedented devastation, leaving at least 48 dead and 31 still listed as missing, and exacting up to $15 billion in damage. “We want the navy and the government to keep doing everything they can to continue the search,” said Mei-li Chew Irra, whose husband, Ulises Díaz Salgado, was the captain. Relatives of four crew members of the sunken yacht Litos still hold out hope that their missing loved ones survived. Likewise, Tomás Mayo, a familiar figure in a cowboy hat and boots who has strummed his guitar for decades along Acapulco’s beaches, has no audience for his serenades. “We live off tourism, and there are no tourists now,” lamented Brandon Palacios, one of the divers. Acapulco’s iconic cliff divers are ready to resume daily shows, but there are no spectators to witness their death-defying leaps from the craggy heights of La Quebrada into the churning sea below.
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