Acapulco's yacht crews went down with their ships
On the night Hurricane Otis barreled into Acapulco, Saúl Parra Morales received a video that only hours before would have seemed unbelievable.
For days, forecasters had predicted little more than a tropical storm. But Parra Morales watched in horror as his brother filmed the deafening gusts of wind and waves cracking against the deck of the Litos, the yacht where he worked and that proved no match for what became the most powerful storm to hit Mexico's Pacific Coast.
“This is getting more intense,” Parra Morales' brother, Fernando Esteban Parra Morales, said in the video. “We are nervous, but we are safe.”
He wasn't. Fernando, a machinist, is one of the many mariners on the front lines of this tourist destination who have been missing since the Category 5 hurricane brought destruction to Acapulco last month, shocking forecasters and government officials alike.
Though Mexican authorities have not released details of the 49 people killed and 26 others left missing by the storm, relatives, business leaders and the Mexican navy say many were captains, sailors and other boat workers caught in the hurricane's devastating path. Some say the number of missing may be far higher.
Weeks after Otis made landfall, the ferocious storm's painful toll is coming into sharper focus: Acapulco's large mariner community, a foundation of this tourist magnet for decades, has been left shattered.
Beaches that attracted tens of thousands of visitors annually have been turned into a graveyard of wrecked ships. Yacht captains, diving instructors, hostesses and others who earned their paychecks on the water have had their livelihoods upended.
Compounding the pain, relatives of the missing say they have been denied closure as they navigate a bureaucracy of authorities to try to find the remains of their loved ones.
Mexican navy officials said they had dispatched a team of 40 people to help look for missing mariners, as well as divers to help recover sunken ships.
“All of these efforts are about search and rescue,” Capt. Rogelio Gallegos Cortés of the Mexican navy said in an interview aboard a naval ship.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has dismissed the questioning of the Mexican government's response to Acapulco as political attacks against his administration.
Acapulco's nautical labor force plays a critical role in a destination known globally as a glamorous vacation spot for deep-sea fishing, cliff diving and boating.
Known as the “Riviera of Mexico,” Acapulco's beaches long have attracted celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Brad Pitt and Salma Hayek. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, honeymooned in Acapulco. And the city was immortalized in the 1963 Elvis Presley song and movie “Fun in Acapulco.”
Mexico's navy has pulled 67 of the 614 boats damaged by Otis to shore, according to a spokesperson, Lt. Liz Barojas.
One challenge, officials said, has been competing interests between relatives of the missing and yacht owners. For days, owners asked the navy not to move some vessels until insurance companies could complete damage assessments, Gallegos Cortés said, while families of the missing pleaded for the navy to recover the boats — and any potential clues about their relatives.