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MEXICO CITY (AFP) - Most of Mexico's southern state of Tabasco was
underwater Thursday, as hundreds of thousands of people waited for
rescuers to pull them out of their homes in the worst floods ever in
the region.
The floods that began last week now cover 80 percent of Tabasco, a
state about the size of Belgium, affecting about one million people
and killing at least one person, officials said.
"Of the 2.1 million Tabasquenos, more than half are suffering from
this serious problem that has not been experienced in the history of
Tabasco," Governor Andres Granier told reporters.
About 30,000 people were placed in 256 state shelters while 300,000
remain trapped in flooded homes, waiting for military helicopters and
boats to rescue them, the state government said in a statement.
More than 850 towns have been flooded in the Gulf of Mexico state.
"The amount of water is shocking," said the governor of the 29,000
square kilometer (11,000 square mile) state. "100 percent of crops are
lost."
"The state is devastated," Granier said.
About 400 doctors and health workers have been deployed to more than
300 towns to detect any outbreak of infections, according to the
state's Civil Protection agency.
State officials warned that rivers continued to rise one week after
the first flooding started.
"The overflow caused by the heavy rains that continue to hit the
region allows us to say 500 cubic meters (of water) has been added" to
the flooding, Tabasco government under secretary Juan Molina told
Formato 21 radio.
The floods began last week when a cold front brought heavy rain that
caused rivers to break their banks.
Soldiers and state authorities had placed more than 700,000 sand bags
along the rivers to prevent flooding, but the water rose above the
barriers.
The floods worsened over the past three days as authorities drained
water from two dams in the neighboring state of Chiapas to prevent
them from exceeding their capacity. The drainage caused three Tabasco
rivers to burst their banks.
The water rose again Thursday in the state capital of Villahermosa,
which was flooded Wednesday after the Grijalva River burst its banks.
But hundreds of Villahermosa residents refused to leave their flooded
homes amid reports of looting in the city of 750,000 people.
"There's no policing," a woman living in Villahermosa told reporters.
"The thieves climb on the roofs and open the doors through there."