Mexico's Katrina

Update: Corruption Blamed For Tabasco Floods

Floods trap residents on rooftops in southern Mexico

(Picture to right from USA Today)

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — Rescuers Friday battled to reach people perched on rooftops as the worst floods on record in Mexico's southern state of Tabasco left hundreds of thousands of residents trapped.

Television pictures showed people struggling to get to higher ground as rising water levels reached up to their necks.

Others awaited rescue on rooftops, surrounded by floodwater.

Mexican navy crews used small boats to rescue victims of the disastrous floods.

"The event has overwhelmed everybody," Interior Minister Francisco Ramirez Acuna told journalists.

Overnight, military troops evacuated the center of Tabasco's capital Villahermosa after a levy collapsed, and hospital patients in the city of 750,000 were flown to neighboring states as floodwaters continued to rise.

The floods affected more than one million residents, or about half Tabasco's population.

"New Orleans was small compared to this," said state Governor Andres Granier, in reference to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed about 1,000 people in the southern US city alone.

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More than 100 feared dead in Dominican Floods

Fri Nov 2, 2007 3:02pm EDT

By Manuel Jimenez

SANTO DOMINGO, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The death toll from devastating floods in the Dominican Republic unleashed by Tropical Storm Noel could exceed 100, officials said on Friday, as rescuers on boats and helicopters continued to try to reach communities cut off by raging rivers.

The official body count on Friday after days of torrential rain reached 79 in the Dominican Republic, with 43 people listed as missing, the Emergency Operations Center said. Close to 65,000 people in the Caribbean country of around 8 million had been driven from their homes.

...WORST DISASTER IN YEARS

If the 100-plus death toll feared by the Dominican authorities were to be confirmed, Noel would represent the worst natural disaster in the country since spring floods in May 2004 killed around 250. The same floods killed 2,000 people in neighboring Haiti.

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