More than 15 days after Hurricane Erick hit the coast of Oaxaca, humanitarian aid has not reached the affected municipalities, including Santa María Huatulco, said Carol Antonio Altamirano, a federal representative for the Morena party.
The federal legislator stated that in Huatulco, one of the state’s main tourist destinations, a total of 47,317 people suffered damage to their homes and were also affected by damage to roads, schools, and crops.
The serious damage to roads, homes, and crops occurred in the towns of Puente de Coyula, Bajos de Coyula, and Arenal.
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“Special mention should be made of the floods and landslides in the Santa Cruz Huatulco region, a prime tourist destination that suffered unprecedented landslides and flooding, causing damage to homes, the drainage and sewage system, and even some of the most important beaches in the tourist destination,” he added.
Among the main damages reported are landslides, landslides on roads and highways, houses at risk of collapse due to rising rivers, roadblocks caused by branches and mud, as well as fallen trees, flooded homes, and damage to electrical and hydraulic infrastructure, among others.
“From one moment to the next, the population of this region lost the little they had. In an area marked by poverty, the survivors lost their homes, household goods, food, medicine, clothing, blankets—in other words, the meager assets they had built with their own efforts.”
The municipality of Santa María Huatulco has initiated the corresponding procedures to request a “Declaration of Emergency and Natural Disaster,” in accordance with the parameters outlined in the Operating Guidelines of the Program for the Well-being of Persons in Social or Natural Emergencies, for the 2025 fiscal year; however, no such declaration has been issued so far.
Antonio Altamirano maintained that the operations and actions carried out by the Ministry of National Defense (Defense) to support the affected population have not been sufficient; and municipal authorities have had to deal with a “mass of bureaucratic requirements” included in the guidelines for issuing emergency and natural disaster declarations, which are necessary to exercise federal resources.
The lack of a declaration, he noted, “inhumanely delays actions to mitigate the suffering of thousands of Oaxacans, who for several days have been suffering from hunger, thirst, cold, and uncertainty about the support they will receive.”
Source: oaxaca.eluniversal
