The Highwire with Del Bigtree - ACAPULCO REELING AFTER DEVASTATING HURRICANE OTIS

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Mike Saavedra and Harvey Gonzalez from Strategic Response Partners join Del from Acapulco just days after an unprecedented category 5 hurricane pummeled the resort town, leaving large-scale destruction in its wake. Hear the first hand account from this boots-on-the-ground response team about the abysmal recovery effort from the Mexican government to help bring even the most basic lifesaving supplies to the almost one million people affected.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

There are so many things happening in the world today, and one of them that we tend to forget sometimes is Mother Nature's can be more drastic than any of them. And that is what we discovered in Acapulco this week as a Category 5 hurricane slammed into that beach area. Really the biggest one in history. This is what that looked like in the news. Hurricane Otis slamming into Mexico's Pacific Coast overnight. Hurricane Otis, the strongest on record. to hit Mexico's Pacific coast. One of the worst storms ever to make landfall

in our world's history in a metropolitan area. At 10 a.m. Tuesday, Otis is a tropical storm. Winds 70 miles per hour. By 10 p.m., winds are 160 miles per hour. So Otis went from a tropical storm to a cat five in just 12 hours. It is that 12-hour window where it rewrote the history books.

There were probably a lot of people caught off guard, maybe even in a dangerous place that they wouldn't want to be, during such an intense storm. Neighborhoods submerged in water, including the base of this stadium. Mudslides and fallen trees spilling into major roads,

cutting off vital access for vehicles. People don't have water, they don't have food, a lot of people are trapped. Acapulco is a total disaster. It's not what it was before. The park was totally destroyed, the buildings, all the streets.

No, I would describe by Acapulco now as a total disaster. The people are telling us, They're not getting help. They're not getting water. They're not getting food. We saw looting in some streets, in some stores. Now, frustration with the government's response growing.

As residents say, they're left to fend for themselves. Many flocking to makeshift shelters, lining up for hours for a chance to get food and water. We don't have anything anymore. They looted everything. Not all of us looted. We really need help. There's nobody here.

A long rebuilding. process with the cost of the destruction potentially reaching $15 billion. I'm not going to mix my words. There is a humanitarian crisis going on right now. Well, we reached out to our friends at Strategic Response Partners. They are a team that rush in wherever there's danger. When most people are running away from tragedies like this, they charge in to help. And if you remember during the Maui fires that we got in incredible footage there from them. And I'm joined right now by Mike Savedra and Harvey Gonzalez from Strategic Response Partners. That my understanding is Harvey, you're still on the ground in

Acapulco and Mike, you just left. But, you know, this is, this, there's the reporting that this is a very rare event. I mean, I've been to Acapulco. I don't ever remember seeing this level of devastation. It's somewhat unprecedented. Is it not? It sure is. I mean, being from Miami, Florida, we know what the resort feel. We know what a big city looks like. And Harvey's from Miami, Florida as well. And when we first got to Acapulco, I mean, we were blown away by just the manner of destruction, like how high grade this was. Every type of building, every type of neighborhood, every type of civilian. And it was in urgent and emergent need. And I was surprised that the amount of help that wasn't. invisible. When I look at these images, I mean, it looks like just windows blown out in high rises. I mean, it's really shocking. You would think that these buildings are designed for high winds and rain. What is it? You know, I'm always sort of shocked by this. If you're on the beach, it's not like this rocks flying through the air. Is it just air pressure that's able to do that?

Well, it's a high wind. It started out as a tropical storm. I was actually at my firehouse the night before, and I went to bed and everything was normal. And I woke up and I had Steve giving me a call, Steve Selleck. And he was like, listen, get your stuff and get your passport and get Harvey. And you guys get to the airport right away. You guys are needed. And I was like, what's going on?

And he's like, there's a Cap 5 hurricane that just hit Alcapocco. And I was like, where? Because usually a Cap 5 hurricane would come announced, you know, from days, prior four or five days before, there'll be announced that there's a big storm. There's a large mass head in your direction. And these people just got clocked with absolutely no warning. There was, it was a tropical storm at night.

And when they woke up, some of them in the middle of the night, it was a nightmare. And that's what I mean, news was saying. That's historic to see a storm grow in that magnitude that quickly. Now I think about Maui, I mean, that's the United States of a America, you know, we tend to have resources. We're all shocked at how poorly that was handled. Harvey, how would you describe, you know, Mexico and how they're, I mean, are they built to handle anything like this? No, they are not. Unfortunately, they've never dealt with a storm of this magnitude.

They were not prepared. There was no game plan put in place. And what we saw when we first came in, as you're seeing in some of these pictures, is total turmoil, chaos, very disorganized. You see a lot of military that are coming in, but they're not really doing anything. They're just, they're standing around guarding places and stuff like that, but there's no plan put in place to what is the next step. And I guess right here we're watching people just, is this, is there looting going on? People just taking stuff out of stores and, I mean, it's like every man for himself right now? Correct. That is correct. Every man is for himself.

Figure it out how you can. We had a situation where we saw people trying to reach the hospital and they were being turned away. They were, you know, depending on what the situation was, they weren't being allowed to be seen at the hospital. Wow. So it's pretty bad. It is pretty bad. Amazing. You know, some of the images, I mean, what type of death toll is this mounting right now? I mean, were people able to get out of the way? Well, right now it's very unknown. And for the simple reason that number one, there was really no planning.

So because there is really no planning, the situation is that they're saying that there's, you know, anywhere from 100 to 150 a death toll. And that number can be a lot higher. A lot of the buildings have not, unfortunately, have not been cleared. So in reality, we don't know what's inside the buildings. We went to one particular building and we asked the owners at the building, hey, have you guys had the military come through and check out the building? And their answer to us was no. They have not had the military come through.

And they were going up and down the building, just getting gathering things and doing what they needed to do to try to be safe. But we told them it's like, listen, you know, don't let the children go into the building. You know, if anything, stay out of the building until someone can come out or let us clear the building for you to make sure that there is no harm in the building. And just I think in clearing you guys do videotape that you sent us some of the video footage. If you want to just talk me through, what are we looking at here? Even in a, that you can understand from the firefighting of perspective,

there's a step approach to all these things. And what you're seeing here is just an initial view of a building that was completely destroyed. They were going through different store. You see the cities that are completely desolate. There's a lack of leadership. It's not a lack of personnel. We sure did see a lot of soldiers coming and going. but I feel bad for the firefighters and the USAR guys that are in this area because they're supposed to be backed by their government and a lot of them are volunteered.

So a lot of guys were worried about their own families and they reported to the firehouse to get some work done and they were caught with a complete surprise. There was no there was no weather notifications. There was no information that was being given to them to prepare for this emergency and then they just responded. And when we went up to them and even myself telling them, look, I'm a firefirmation. front of paramedic, you know, I'm a number of search and rescuing. Like, is there anything I can do to help you? And the guy's like, I can't even get some, I can't even call my chief. I can't call people or radios don't work. So it was a nightmare. It really was.

When I, you know, one of the things I think adds pressure to this specific situation, I mean, Maui, obviously things like that, devastating other hurricanes. But in this area, one of my concerns would be the drug cartels. I mean, Alcapulco is, you know, what they consider a hot spot. when it comes to human trafficking and drug trafficking and all that, does that play in in a situation like this at all? It does play a big factor because it's not so much Acapulco being the issue. They do have a problem there, especially as you go into the mountains.

But if you're traveling back and forth from city to city trying to get there because there's nowhere to stay in Acapulco, that's where you can really run into problems. As it is, when we were leaving the city, you see a lot of deep park. pretty much desperate asking us for a ride, you know, to try to get us out of the city and take them with us, which we, you know, we've been highly instructed not to do so because unfortunately, we don't know who we're dealing with. You know, we don't know at what capacity of this person we're dealing with. And one instance of my, saw somebody on the side of the road and he told me, it was Harvey, what do you think? And next thing you know, we see like eight men hiding in the back of a tree.

So we didn't, we did not know what to expect. So our, our strict instruction was you, you go through, you don't stop you don't stop for anything or anybody the only people that can really pull you over there is the transit police and even with that you're you're supposed to engage with them a little bit differently than you would typically do so in the u.s so we would just show them our paperwork we don't hand over anything to them we just show them exactly who we are what we're doing there and i had an instance where we were pulled over at one point and uh they were they were very courteous to us. They let us, they give us passage and told us to keep moving forward doing what we're doing. They were thankful for it. But unfortunately, I asked them, I says, what plans do you guys have in

place? And they were like, right now we don't know what we're doing. We're just trying to be is possible. Is there any Red Cross or any of those, you know, NGOs that we know can step in here? Does Mexico have any sort of FEMA that that works through these situations? We're very blessed for having the FEMA program in the United States of America. I don't think a lot of Americans understand how blessed we are to have that, to have a dedicated group of personnel that are going to respond to no matter what the incident is. It was very humbling for us to get into the city. And just like Harvey said, even from the beginning, we were warned if there's a police officer

that gets behind you or someone puts on red and blue lights, don't pull over. And for me, being from the United States, I was like, what do you mean? We don't pull over. And they said you do not pull over, you continue forward because you just never know. So we knew immediately that the rules were different. Mexico does not have a FEMA style or FEMA-grade network with bandwidth that can handle a disaster like this. And working with SRP, one of the things that we specialize in is being privatized and be able to go into these cities. And the first thing we wanted to do was just establish communications.

and we were looking for something that was basic, like what we call a boo, a base of operation for the Mexican government, and we couldn't find it. And we tried talking to different personnel and trying to, we found a group of urban search and rescue men from Mexico. These are the volunteer guys that I told you about, that those guys are absolutely amazing,

and they were like, look, man, we're on our own. Let me ask you this. I mean, I think this is what really is haunting for those of us is this is a tourist destination. And, you know, I think about Pouquet, you know, that tidal wave that hit. Like if you happen to be, you know, do you have advice? I mean, the question would be if some sort of, you know, this disaster happens while you're

in a vacation area like this, especially in another country, what is the recommendation? Do you just stay in place? Do you get the hell out of there as fast as you can? Do you go to an airport? Do you rent a car and just start driving? Is there anything that's like the best way to handle being really out of your element? in the worst of circumstances? So one of the things you want to immediately do

is always keep yourself communicating with your family or anyone back home, but always keep those lines of communication open. You're always looking at the news. We saw video Harvey and I of there was people that were vacationing, like Canadians vacationing in Acapulco, and they're recording how beautiful the sunset was the night before.

And then the next day is just destruction. Yeah. So when it comes through a safety aspect, that's why it's important for families to have their own disaster plans. having your IDs, everyone's passports, having an understanding of where you're going, having an understanding of this is how we're going to communicate while we're in this country, and having that home base to check into to let them know that it's important that I check in with you guys every day.

Usually whenever RBI or anybody in SRP would travel or anywhere, one of the first things that we're always monitoring is the local news. We're monitoring the weather. And also, I just won't rely on the news and where I'm at, but I'll be looking at the National Weather Service to see if there's any kinds. Like if we would have gone to bed if we were being in Alcapulco, And to be very honest, and we would have seen there was a tropical storm, it humbles me to be able to say I would have been like,

ah, we can handle that. But to wake up in a morning to this just nightmare, it's incredibly humbling. It's a really good point, to let family know where you are, I would imagine, so that you're set up. If there's an emergency, here is where I was going to be. I would imagine checking in if you're moving out of that space. So should you lose contact, your family knows where the last place you were, was because as we're saying, I mean, we've got cartels, you have situations there.

Well, look, it's great to know you guys are out there. We love that you check in with us from these spots. It really give us the sense of what's on the ground in these situations. It's so devastating. Our hearts, our prayers go out to all those people in Acapulco. What is the situation right? Do they have running water and electricity and all that in most of the parts, or is it just No, as of last night, there were some areas that have TV power, it's not controlled. So in other words, in my situation, last night I got stranded in Acapulco. The SUV that I was driving broke down, and I had no choice but to leave. And thank God to the U-Sar guys that we met, they were able to come through and pull me out of the area.

And I was in a really when I actually broke down because I was already on my way out of Acapulco. And to get out of Acapulco, you've got to come up the hill and start heading towards. the tunnel on that way up to aquapoko that area is all uh it's all cartel control so i was in a really bad situation uh thankfully we were able to move quick and get people out there and they were able to take me back to one of the spots that they were hunkered out this is a there's a hotel that pretty much is completely damaged and you have very few spots where you have electricity so they have the power running but you don't know if there's a live wire somewhere no one's assess that and then not only that they don't have water so it's a situation where you you have to be

blessed that if you made it out of there that you're good you know so one of the things that we learned one of the things that we learned especially responding with steve to all these different disasters whether it's a wildfire hurricane a tornado snow that we've done blizzards in dallas we like to consider ourselves being from miami hurricanes we got a brazilian jujitsu black belt in hurricanes. And I mean, we showed up and it was definitely a gut punch. There was every manner, even as a paramedic myself, being in the vehicle with Harvey and seeing someone carrying a child that needed medical attention. And as we were going to get out, we realized that it was a huge group of people. And it took a second to realize that we would have been mobbed. And we had to

wait for her to cross the street and we were like flagging her to come towards us so that we can assess the child. But it's humbling to see that the influence. infrastructure, which is we wanted to reach out to the Mexican government, like, let us help you. We have these generators. We have this equipment. We have everything on a boat, you know, an hour away from you guys, and we can move it in with a helicopter. It's a cargo helicopter. So we can get everything in there and we can get you guys back out. And we remember with so much red tape that it's not aggravating. It's depressing. Because we, we have all the answers that they're looking for. And we just can't even get, can't even get anybody in front of us.

Wow. My understanding is you've given us a couple of good organizations that people want to help out or the organizations we can help out with. WcK.org, worldcentralkitchen.org is a recommendation that they're making, responding in Mexico after Hurricane Otis. You can certainly get involved there. Guys, I'm going to let you get back to work. I really appreciate you taking the time. And thank you for your courage, jumping into places where most people just would not go. you know, others run away. You guys are running in. Just really, it's a pleasure knowing you and getting to have this moment. One more thing. Tina Blanco at sat1,23.com, she saved our lives.

Because if it wasn't for that sat phone, I don't know what we would have done. Wow. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. You guys, take care. We'll see you next time. Thank you. God bless.