Devastating Floods Hit Mexico
Diocesan Press Service. September 10, 1973 [73211]
IRAPUATO, Guanajuato, Mex. -- At 1 p.m. Saturday, 18 August, the dam called The Rabbit (El Conejo) burst after two months of steady rainfall which exceeded by 500 percent the normal amount. The waters spread rapidly over the rich farmland of the Bajio Valley and at 4 p.m. rushed into the city of Irapuato, Guanajuato, at a height of 5 -6 feet. Many of the stronger houses and businesses had walls torn away while the homes constructed with adobe brick were reduced to piles of mud. Cars were slammed into trees and through walls. 200, 000 people in the area were left homeless, without water, food or clothing. Communications were cut and it was not until late Monday that the magnitude of the disaster reached the outside world.
Responding to the plea for help, a team from the Mexican Episcopal Church, led by the Rt. Rev. Jose G. Saucedo, with $4,000 from the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, purchased 10 tons of family food packages and blankets and carried them to the stricken city. After contacting the military command in charge of coordinating emergency relief, the team, accompanied by General Roberto Cuenca, was sent to the town of Abasolo, normally 20 miles distant. After a 160 mile detour, the supplies, the first to be received, were handed over to the Municipal President for distribution to nearby settlements which were running out of food and to refugees arriving from inundated neighboring communities.
In Irapuato, a city of 200, 000 inhabitants, hundreds of families were being housed in schools, churches and at the military camp where neighborhood groups were kept together as much as possible to facilitate the search for relatives. Emergency food kitchens were set up in different parts of the city and water trucks moved up and down the streets. People with something to salvage were busy shoveling the mud from out their front doors and washing down furniture with water from the street. Those with nothing sat on the piles of rubble that had been their homes and talked about what had happened. Some of the homeless families were camped out on the flat rooftops of their neighbors' houses listening to Mexico's president, Lic. Luis Echeverria, broadcast to the nation from the Irapuato City Hall. A woman called out from her second story window, "Go over to Guerrero Street and see more of what has happened to us." As she talked her expression broke and tears streamed down her face. Several blocks away a seven-year-old boy dug alone in the mud remains of his home. At the Blanco Department Store pumps were slowly reducing the water level in the basement where 45 people had been trapped and a man stood on the steps carefully lifting out the rising debris. On Calle de la Paz, lines of wet clothing criss-crossed over the broken pavement. A woman pointed to the five-foot water mark inside her house and said, "The children could have drowned." The mark was above her head.
At the Military Camp small helicopters were taking off to drop supplies to the isolated settlements in the surrounding countryside. Although without food themselves for 24 hours, teenage soldiers joked as they unloaded the incoming trucks. The highways and paths through the fields were filled with people hurrying to join the snaking food lines. By Wednesday night the death count stood officially at 47 with more than 300 people missing. Thousands of acres of farmland, mostly sown with corn, remained under water and many tiny communities were still isolated. The rains had ceased falling on Sunday and the sky remained clear.
The Bajio Valley, comprising parts of five central states, supplies Mexico with a large part of its corn. In the month before this disaster, the cost of this basic food had risen to the point where tortillas (similar to thin, corn pancakes) were selling for 1/3 more a kilo. The daily diet of the very poor consists of tortillas and chilis. The less poor add beans (which have also increased 1/3 in price) to this diet. The people of the Bajio are, with outside help, beginning to again take hold of their lives. The effects of this catastrophe will be felt throughout the country for several years.
(Note to Editors: We hope to have photographs for this story in a few days.)