ACAPULCO, MEXICO -- Hurricane Otis tore across Mexico's southern Pacific coast as a powerful and dangerous Category 5 hurricane Wednesday, unleashing massive flooding in the resort city of Acapulco, sending sheets of earth down steep mountainsides, and cutting power and cell service in large swaths of the state of Guerrero.
While little is known about possible deaths or the full extent of the damage -- the main highway into Acapulco is impassable -- experts are calling Otis the strongest hurricane in history to make landfall along the Eastern Pacific Coast.
The storm had dissipated over the mountains by Wednesday afternoon, but appeared to have left a fair amount of devastation in its wake.
Acapulco's Diamond Zone, an oceanfront area replete with hotels, restaurants and other tourist attractions, appeared to be mostly underwater in drone footage that Foro TV posted online Wednesday afternoon, with boulevards and bridges completely hidden by an enormous lake of brown water.
Large buildings had their walls and roofs partially or completely ripped off. Dislodged solar panels, cars and debris littered the lobby of one severely damaged hotel. People wandered up to their waists in water in some areas, while on other less-flooded streets soldiers shoveled rubble and fallen palm fronds from the pavement.
While much of the city was in the dark and without phone service, some people were able to use satellite phones loaned by the Red Cross to let family members know they were OK.
Alicia Galindo, a 28-year-old stylist in the central Mexican city of San Luis Potosi, was one of the lucky ones to get such a call. Her parents and brother were staying in Acapulco's Hotel Princess for an international mining conference when Otis hit.
They told her the worst part of the storm was between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. when "windows began to fall, floors broke up, mattresses flew, hallways collapsed, doors fell down ... until everything was gone," she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Fortunately, they escaped unhurt, she said.
However, Galindo had yet to hear from her boyfriend, who was attending the same conference but staying in a different hotel.
"Everybody is trying to find something out ... but no one knows anything," she said anxiously.
Just outside Acapulco, Flor Campos trudged for more than an hour through mud along a highway Wednesday morning before she peeled off her shoes, worried she'd lose them in the muck.
The domestic worker from a small town in Guerrero was among dozens of families, women and children who clambered over tree trunks and other debris left by landslides in the mountainous terrain. It was a daunting escape, but people were desperate to get out.
"We had been waiting since 3 in the morning to get out, so we decided to walk. It was more dangerous to stay. There are trees knocked down, power lines down," Campos said. "There are children back there, 2 or 3 years old, with no water, nothing."
On Tuesday, Otis took many by surprise when it rapidly strengthened from a tropical storm to a powerful Category 5 as it tore along the coast. Researchers tracking the storm told The Associated Press that the storm broke records for how quickly it intensified, at a time when climate change has exacerbated devastating weather events like this one.
"It's one thing to have a Category 5 hurricane make landfall somewhere when you're expecting it or expecting a strong hurricane, but to have it happen when you're not expecting anything to happen is truly a nightmare," said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
Acapulco, Tecpan and other towns along the Costa Grande in Guerrero were hit hard, said Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He said conditions were so bad that communication with the area had been "completely lost."
Acapulco is a city of nearly 1 million people at the foot of steep mountains. Luxury homes and slums alike cover the city's hillsides with views of the glistening Pacific. Once drawing Hollywood stars for its nightlife, sport fishing and cliff diving shows, Acapulco has in more recent years fallen victim to competing organized crime groups that have sunk the city into violence, driving many international tourists to the Caribbean waters of Cancun and the Riviera Maya or beaches farther down the Pacific coast in the state of Oaxaca.
Between the internationally known resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo are two dozen small towns and villages.
On the outskirts of Acapulco on Wednesday, highway workers looked on helplessly without the heavy machinery needed to clear debris from the roadway. They warned the road could give way at any time because of the rain-softened ground beneath. Bridges in some areas had collapsed, and trees leaned almost horizontally across the highway, not because they were uprooted, but because the earth they grew on had slid down the slope.
Damage to the local military airport made it hard for authorities to access the region, Lopez Obrador said. He said high-ranking members of his government would travel to Guerrero to help. Mexico's Secretary of National Defense told the AP on Wednesday that 7,000 military personnel had been deployed to the area, and that more than 1,200 more were on their way. Officials also said they were working to restore power and phone service.
Lopez Obrador noted that Otis was a stronger hurricane than Pauline, which hit Acapulco in 1997, destroying swaths of the city and killing more than 200 people. Otis arrived just days after Hurricane Norma struck the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula to the north. No deaths or injuries were reported from that storm.
In the Atlantic on Wednesday, Hurricane Tammy moved northeast over open water with 100 mph (155 kph) winds after sweeping through the Lesser Antilles over the weekend. Tammy was about 510 miles (815 kilometers) southeast of Bermuda, and was moving northeast at about 14 mph (22 kph). The storm was expected to become a powerful extratropical cyclone by Thursday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
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Associated Press writers Maria Verza in Mexico City and Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
