ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Emergency flights began arriving in Acapulco Tuesday to evacuate some of the tens of thousands of tourists stranded in the resort city by flooding and landslides that shut down the highway to Mexico City and swamped the international airport.
The death toll rose to 38 from the combined punch of Tropical Storm Manuel, which hit Acapulco and hundreds of miles of Mexico's Pacific Coast, and Hurricane Ingrid, which battered the Gulf Coast over the weekend.
As many as 60,000 tourists, many of whom traveled from Mexico City for a long holiday weekend, found themselves stranded in Acapulco, with the airport flooded and highways blocked by landslides and flooding caused by Manuel.
While many hotels were operating normally, many of the outlying neighborhoods of the city were without water or power service, and floodwater was knee-deep around the check-in counters of the city's airport.
