The floods in Tabasco have left countless people homeless. Nobody knows how many yet. Although 60-70,000 people are in shelters so far.
Certainly hundreds of thousands of people are affected, their homes cut off by the water, flooded, partially destroyed, or simply washed away entirely.
Roughly 20,000 people wound up trapped on their roofs. (If that doesn’t bring back serious Katrina memories, I don’t know what can.)
Up to eighty percent of the entire state has been inundated. The total damage is already estimated at up to US$5 billion.
Obviously it’s one of the worst natural disasters in Mexico’s history. And it’s nowhere near over.
People began running out of food and water two days ago. Electricity is still down in much of the state. The rotting corpses of dogs, chickens, pigs, and other animals are floating in the water. Cholera is on deck. Massive spraying will be necessary to prevent dengue and malaria. And so on.
Some of this Televisa photo gallery is simply hard to believe. If you don’t speak any Spanish, just assume each caption says something “yes, it’s hard to believe life can suddenly suck this much.” Close enough.
If you’d like to help, you can donate to the Red Cross, UNICEF, Save the Children, or any other charity you prefer in a matter of seconds. The Mexican Embassy has also posted direct transfer bank information for relief-specific accounts accessible in the U.S. and Canada.
I’m posting this here, despite the fact that the rains began last week, because the tragedy is going to affect hundreds of thousands of people for months and even years to come. But the news cycle moves on relentlessly. I just checked Google News (10:50 am PST 11-7-07), and the floods are already completely gone from the front page.
Si hablan español, el gobierno del estado de Tabsaco tiene todos sus últimos avisos de la emergencia aqui, y Televisa pone sus noticias actualizadas con frequencia y muchos videos aqui, aunque Televisa sí misma ya está empezando a pasar a otras historias.
I hope you might want to toss in a few bucks yourself, before we all just forget and move on to the next tragic horror du jour.
