ACAPULCO, Mexico - Mexican soldiers dug through tons of mud and dirt Friday in their continuing search for landslide victims as authorities looked for a federal police helicopter that disappeared while on a relief mission to the flood-stricken Pacific coast.
The helicopter with three crew members on board was returning from the remote mountain village of La Pintada, where the mudslide occurred, when it disappeared Thursday, federal security spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said.
“We still don’t know anything,” Sanchez said. “[The helicopter] was in La Pintada … and then we didn’t hear anything more from it.”
Search efforts continued in the town north of Acapulco, where 68 people were reported missing after Monday’s slide. Two bodies have been recovered, but it was unclear whether they were among those on the list of missing.
Federal police have been helping to transport emergency supplies and aid victims of flooding caused by Tropical Storm Manuel, which washed out bridges and collapsed highways throughout the area, cutting Acapulco off by land and stranding thousands of tourists.
A patchwork connection of roads leading to Mexico City had been partially reopened around midday Friday, the country’s Transportation Department said Friday. Part of the main toll highway, however, remain blocked by collapsed tunnels and mudslides, so drivers were being shunted to a smaller, non-toll highway that is in better shape on some stretches.
Even that route was so badly damaged, however, that traffic was allowed through only in small groups escorted by federal police, and in only one direction: outward bound from Acapulco.
Thousands of cars, trucks and buses lined up at the edge of Acapulco, waiting to leave.
“We’re a little calmer now. We’ve spent six days stranded, waiting to get out,” said Armando Herrera, a tourist from Mexico state, outside of Mexico City, as he waited in his car to be allowed on to the newly reopened road.
Survivors of the La Pintada landslide staying at a shelter in Acapulco recounted how a tidal wave of dirt, rocks and trees exploded off the hill, sweeping through the center of town, burying families in their homes and sweeping wooden houses into the bed of the swollen river that winds past the village on its way to the Pacific.
“Everyone who could ran into the coffee fields. It smothered the homes and sent them into the river. Half the homes in town were smothered and buried,” said Marta Alvarez, a 22-year-old homemaker who was cooking with her 2-year-old son, two brothers and parents when the landslide struck.
La Pintada was the scene of the single greatest tragedy in the twin paths of destruction wreaked by Manuel and Hurricane Ingrid, which simultaneously pounded both of Mexico’s coasts over the weekend, spawning huge floods and landslides across hundreds of miles of coastal and inland areas.
Manuel later gained hurricane force and rolled into the northern state of Sinaloa on Thursday morning before weakening over land. By Thursday night, it had degenerated into an area of low pressure over the western Sierra Madre mountains, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Three people were reported dead in Sinaloa: a fisherman swept from his boat, a small boy who fell into a ditch and a young man whose vehicle was swept away by floodwaters that reached waist-deep in some places in Culiacan, the Sinaloa state capital. Authorities reported three thousand people had been forced to take refuge at storm shelters throughout the state.
The death toll from the weekend storms, not including the dead in Sinaloa, stood at 97. But it was certain to rise because the figure also doesn’t include the missing in La Pintada.
President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a trip to New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, visiting Mexico City for a Friday meeting with Pena Nieto, offered U.S. help in flood recovery and relief efforts.
Biden also told Pena Nieto that he wants to deepen relations between the neighboring countries beyond drugs, security and immigration.
Launching the High Level Economic Dialogue to boost trade and investment ties, Biden urged the two countries to develop a stronger economic partnership that can move “more people, goods and information across our border.”
“We have a billion dollars a day in trade. Is there any businessman or woman here who can’t rationally picture in 10 years that being $2 billion?” Biden asked at the Foreign Ministry before he met with the president. “We cannot settle for business as usual.”
Biden later talked with Pena Nieto about expanding trade between the countries by improving border crossing infrastructure and keeping international bridges open longer hours so more goods can move across. The meeting came just weeks after revelations that the National Security Agency had monitored Pena Nieto’s emails before his 2012 election.
“There is no relationship that we value more, there is no economic relationship that we think holds the most promise and there is no part of the world that has the opportunity to do as much to generate economic growth over the next 20 or 30 years in the hemisphere,” Biden said after the meeting.
Information for this article was contributed by Adriana Gomez Licon, Martin Duran, E. Eduardo Castillo, Adriana Gomez Licon and Mark Stevenson of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/21/2013