On this episode of THE MODERN MEXICO PODCAST host Nathaniel Parish Flannery talks to James Frederich, a veteran Mexico correspondent who traveled to the beach city Acapulco to report on the storm damage caused by Hurricane Otis. While 200 mile per hour gusts of wind buffeted the city, residents and hotel guests cowered inside. Nearly 250,000 homes were damaged and many beachfront hotels were almost totally destroyed. Initial estimates calculated that over 80% of the city’s 20,000 hotel rooms had been damaged and that the bill for reconstruction would top sixteen billion dollars. Mexico’s president, a polarizing populist named Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has faced criticism for his response to the storm. James gives him an "F" for his initial response to the hurricane. "In terms of just helping people who needed food and water and medical care there was nothing those first couple of days. At the same time, President Lopez Obrador was playing down the damage and the deaths in Acapulco. I think unequivocally his response was terrible. They were just trying to do PR to make it not look as bad as it was. It was really terrible," James explains. "The damage I saw in Acapulco was incomparable to anything I’ve seen anywhere else. It was the strongest hurricane to ever hit [Pacific Coast] Mexico [and] one of the strongest hurricanes to hit a city in recorded history. The winds that were recorded in Acapulco as Hurricane Otis was at its strongest, were some of the strongest winds ever recorded on Earth and were certainly the strongest to ever be recorded hitting a city," James adds. "I don’t want to be pessimistic. It has such tremendous potential. It’s sad to see that not be realized. But, there are huge challenges for [Acapulco] to rebuild. I can’t be confident that it’s going to be back. But, I really hope it does. It’s a beautiful city. The idea that the hurricane was the death blow to it is really tragic to think about," he says.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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