Costco looted in Mexico in wake of tropical storm Manuel

Desperation mounted in Acapulco, as major roads in and out of the city were blocked by landslides. Tropical storm Manuel is reforming and could hit Baja California this weekend.

By Michael Weissenstein,?Associated Press / September 18, 2013

?Desperation mounted Wednesday in the cut-off resort of Acapulco, where residents looted a store and thousands of exhausted, despondent tourists waited to be ferried out by air. The death toll in massive flooding in southern and central Mexico rose to 57.

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Mexico was hit by the one-two punch of twin storms over the weekend, and the storm that soaked Acapulco on Sunday ? Manuel ?reformed into a tropical storm Wednesday as it swirled slowly off the Pacific coast on a path that that would take it over the resort of La Paz, on the Baja California peninsula, over the weekend.

With a tropical disturbance over the Yucatan Peninsula headed toward the same Gulf coast hit by Hurricane Ingrid, the country could face another double hit, just it struggles to restore services and evacuate those stranded by last weekend's flooding.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said 57 had been killed nationwide.

In Acapulco, gun-toting state police guarded the entrance to a partly flooded Costco store hours after people looted it on one of the city's main boulevards, carting off shopping carts full of food, clothing, and in some cases flat-screen TVs.

Hundreds of people waded through waist-high brown water in the store's parking lot on Wednesday, fishing out anything ? cans of food or soda ? that looters might have dropped. Others shouted for the now-shuttered store to be re-opened.

"If we can't work, we have to come and get something to eat," said 60-year-old fisherman Anastasio Barrera, as he stood with his wife outside the store. "The city government isn't doing anything for us, and neither is the state government."

With the twin roads from Acapulco to Mexico City closed down, at least 40,000 tourists saw a long holiday beach weekend degenerate into a desperate struggle to get weeping children, elderly parents and even a few damp, bedraggled dogs back home. Thousands of people, some sweating, profusely, waited in line Wednesday outside a shopping mall-convention center that was being used as a shelter and waiting area for flights out.

Two of Mexico's largest airlines were running about two flights an hour from Acapulco's still-flooded international airport, with priority for those with tickets, the elderly and families with young children.

Inside the shopping center, Omar Diaz, a 23-year-old window installer, waited with his wife, their 2-day-old baby and two other children on a foam mattress covered with a blanket. Their home was flooded and the few possessions they were able to save hung in plastic bags around their improvised bed.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0918/Costco-looted-in-Mexico-in-wake-of-tropical-storm-Manuel

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