Hurricane Trudy leaves 34 dead in Guerrero as Acapulco counts cost of fourth major storm in three years

At least 34 people have died and 11 are missing after Hurricane Trudy struck the Mexican state of Guerrero late on Saturday, the fourth major Pacific storm to hit the coast around Acapulco since Hurricane Otis destroyed much of the resort in October 2023.

Trudy came ashore 60km east of the city as a category 3 storm with winds of 195km/h, weaker than Otis but slower-moving, and dumped more than 400mm of rain on the Sierra Madre del Sur in 36 hours. Most of the deaths were in the hill towns of Tecpan and Coyuca, where rivers swollen by the rain swept away homes and a bridge on the coastal highway. The state's civil protection agency said 70,000 people were in shelters and 210,000 without electricity on Monday.

In Acapulco itself, which has only partly recovered from Otis, the damage was less severe but the symbolism was lost on nobody. About a third of the city's hotel rooms were back in service before the weekend; the hoteliers' association said on Monday that perhaps 20% of those were now flooded or without power. The airport reopened on Sunday afternoon.

“After Otis we had nothing. After Trudy we have most of what we rebuilt, so I should be grateful,” said Guadalupe Ríos, 41, who returned to her job as a housekeeper at a beachfront hotel in March after two years without work. “But every October now we pack a bag and watch the sea. The tourists do not come in October any more. They know.”

The Pacific coast of Mexico has historically seen fewer hurricane landfalls than the Caribbean side, and Acapulco had not been struck directly by a major storm for decades before Otis. Scientists attribute the change to unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific, which allowed Otis to intensify from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in 12 hours, the fastest such strengthening on record.

“Three years ago we would have called Otis a freak. We now have a sequence: Otis, John in 2024, Pamela last year, Trudy this week,” said Dr Andrea Salgado, who studies tropical cyclones at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Four major hurricanes in three years on a coast that averaged one a decade is not variability. It is a different coast.”

The federal government has sent 8,000 soldiers and marines to clear roads and distribute supplies, and the development bank has opened an emergency credit line for small businesses. After Otis, the reconstruction budget reached 61bn pesos (£2.6bn); officials have not yet put a figure on Trudy.

The hurricane season in the eastern Pacific runs until 30 November.