Sawt Falasteen - Mexico races to help battered Acapulco after major hurricane

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador personally joined an official convoy heading for the seaside city by road, despite reports of landslides and other debris blocking the way.

"The army is bringing machinery and we're going to try to reopen (the highway) as soon as possible," he told journalists who were also trying to reach Acapulco.

Images emerging via social media pointed to significant damage after Hurricane Otis came ashore overnight as a "potentially catastrophic" Category 5 storm.

Lopez Obrador said earlier that there were no initial reports of deaths but "there's material damage and blocked roads."

Officials emphasized that the lack of communications made it difficult to know the full impact of the storm in Acapulco, home to about 780,000 people.

A convoy carrying humanitarian aid also set off to try to reach the city by land since it was impossible to fly there, authorities said.

"The urgent thing is to attend to the affected population. We still don't have the damage assessment because there's no communication," Civil Protection national coordinator Laura Velazquez said.

Even the navy and military were "seriously affected," she added.

Otis was packing maximum sustained winds of 165 miles (265 kilometers) per hour when it hit the coast, but later dissipated over southern Mexico, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

The storm had rapidly strengthened to the most powerful category of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale as it neared land, taking authorities by surprise.

"Rarely, according to records, does a hurricane develop so quickly and with such force," Lopez Obrador said.

- Tourists take shelter -

Videos posted on social media showed severely damaged hotels and other buildings, including shattered windows.

Tourists were seen using beds and mattresses as protective barriers in their hotel rooms.

Others took refuge in bathrooms.

Toppled trees were seen in the debris-strewn streets and a shopping mall appeared to have suffered major structural damage.

Before the storm hit, many people bought last-minute supplies of food and water, with some businesses and homeowners boarding up their windows in Acapulco, located in the southern state of Guerrero.

More than 500 emergency shelters were opened for residents.

There were widespread power blackouts, though state electricity company CFE said Wednesday that it had managed to restore supply to 40 percent of the more than half a million affected customers.

Heavy rains continued to deluge Guerrero and parts of neighboring Oaxaca -- two of Mexico's poorest states, home to remote mountain communities.

"This rainfall will produce flash and urban flooding, along with mudslides in areas of higher terrain," the NHC warned.

Hurricanes hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November, though few make landfall as a Category 5.

In October 1997, Hurricane Pauline hit Mexico's Pacific coast as a Category 4 storm, leaving more than 200 people dead, some of them in Acapulco.

It was one of the deadliest hurricanes to batter Mexico.

In October 2015, Patricia became the most powerful hurricane ever recorded, pummeling Mexico's Pacific coast with sustained winds of 200 miles per hour.

But the storm caused only material damage and no deaths as it made landfall in a sparsely populated mountainous area.

Just this week, Tropical Storm Norma left three people dead, including a child, after making landfall for a second time in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

Earlier this month, two people died when Hurricane Lidia, an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm, struck the western states of Jalisco and Nayarit.

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.

P.AbuBaker--SF-PST