Hurricane Otis death toll rises to 43, with at least 36 still missing

At least 43 people died when Category 5 Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico's southern Pacific coast, the governor of hard-hit Guerrero said Sunday as the death toll continued to climb.

Gov. Evelyn Salgado said on X that the number of missing also rose to 36 from 10 a day earlier. That increase came after authorities had raised the toll to 39 on Saturday.

In Acapulco, families began to bury the dead on Sunday and continued the search for essentials while government workers and volunteers cleared streets clogged with muck and debris from the powerful Category 5 hurricane.

More resources were arriving as searchers recovered more bodies from Acapulco's harbor and from beneath fallen trees and other storm debris.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Saturday that his opponents are trying to inflate the toll to damage him politically.

Otis roared ashore early Wednesday with devastating 165 mph winds after strengthening so rapidly that people had little time to prepare.

Many people rode out on boats what had started as a tropical storm and in just 12 hours powered up into a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane.

Military personnel and volunteers had worked along Acapulco's main tourist strip Saturday and Salgado announced Sunday that the boulevard had been cleared of debris.

But on the periphery of the city, neighborhoods remained in ruins. Salgado also said that the national electric company reported restoring power to 58% of homes and businesses in Acapulco and 21 water tankers were distributing water to outlying neighborhoods.

Aid has been slow to arrive. The storm's destruction cut off the city of nearly 1 million people for the first day, and because Otis had intensified so quickly on Tuesday little to nothing had been staged in advance. The military presence swelled to 15,000 in the area. López Obrador had called on the armed forces to set up checkpoints in the city to deter looting and robbery.