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Sunday, September 22, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Hurricane Manuel hits Mexico
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- 68 people are still missing
- Damage is widespread
- Thousands were trapped in Acapulco
(CNN) -- The death toll from several storms that hit Mexico this week rose to 101, authorities said late Friday.
An additional 68 people are still missing after storms ravaged the area, the nation's Interior Ministry said.
At one point this week, Mexico seemed to be pummeled from all sides by then-Hurricane Manuel and the remnants of Hurricane Ingrid.
Some 24 states in the country had been impacted by storm damage, the Interior Ministry said.
And the bad news, forecasters say, is that heavy rains could continue through the end of the month.
Trapped in Paradise
One area battered by rain was the tourist destination of Acapulco on the Pacific coast. Manuel had left about 40,000 tourists stranded in Acapulco. As of Thursday, more than 10,000 were able to board military or commercial flights out of the storm-ravaged area. On Friday, some good news was delivered to trapped tourists.
Four ships arrived with 125 tons of groceries and nine tons of medical oxygen, the Interior Ministry said. But it may be some time, officials said, before Acapulco International Airport is fully functional.
In Mexico, Critics Say Political Corruption Worsened Impact of Dual Storms
In Mexico, Critics Say Political Corruption Worsened Impact of Dual Storms
Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press
San Jeronimo, Mexico, on Friday after being struck by rains and floods caused by Tropical Storm Manuel. The federal police have been helping to aid the victims.
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: September 20, 2013
MEXICO CITY — The twin storms that tore through the country this week, unleashing rains that sent mud crashing down hillsides, buckling roads and flooding coastal cities, have renewed criticism that corruption and political shortsightedness made the damage even worse.
Alejandrino Gonzalez/Associated Press
Buses on Friday as they made their way to Acapulco to pick up tourists stranded by Tropical Storm Manuel. A patchwork of roads to Mexico City had been partly reopened around midday.
The death toll rose to 101 late Friday, but was expected to climb higher as rescue workers reached by air isolated mountain villages that had been cut off by landslides along the Pacific Coast. Soldiers continued their search Friday for 68 missing people in La Pintada, a coffee-growing village in Guerrero State where a hillside had given way and a river of mud poured over the town’s center.
“Anywhere you fly over you will see a number of landslides that are truly shocking,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said Friday.
The storms battered both the Pacific and Gulf Coasts starting last weekend, a rare double hit from tropical systems at the same time. But experts said officials had not learned from earlier hurricanes and had failed to prepare for disaster, which magnified the losses this time.
“If we had the right development plan, the country wouldn’t fall into chaos,” said Angel Macías Garza, the vice president for infrastructure at the Mexican Construction Industry Chamber.
Corrupt officials give permits to developers to build along riverbeds and in canyons, Mr. Macías said. State governors build roads without containing walls in flood-prone regions because they prefer to spend the money they save on handouts. The federal disaster fund allocates only 5 percent of its budget on prevention and the other 95 percent on reconstruction.
“Politically, prevention doesn’t pay,” Mr. Macías said. “There is a lack of vision and a lack of resources.”
In an editorial posted on its Web site, Cidac, a research group, echoed the criticism. “Taking preventive measures, like relocating settlements from the most vulnerable areas or investing in infrastructure,” the authors said, “doesn’t appear to sell ad space or generate grateful constituencies.”
The worst natural disaster to affect Mexico in years began last weekend when Manuel, a tropical storm, battered Acapulco and the surrounding Pacific Coast at the same time as Hurricane Ingrid, a Category 1 storm, bore down on the Gulf Coast. Mexico had not seen paired storms on both coasts since 1958, officials said. Manuel then spun out to sea and gathered force before buffeting Sinaloa State in the north again on Thursday.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in a brief visit to Mexico City on Friday that had been scheduled to encourage closer economic ties between the countries, announced that the United States government had donated $250,000 to the Red Cross for emergency relief and offered more direct American assistance. “It’s your decision,” he said, careful not to make the offer seem a criticism of the handling of the storm by Mexico’s president,Enrique Peña Nieto.
Mr. Peña Nieto, whose performance in the crisis is being closely scored, spent most of the week flying between coasts to monitor rescue efforts, and canceled a visit to New York next week to address the United Nations General Assembly.
He has been pushing Mexico’s Congress to approve an ambitious agenda of laws that would raise taxes, open up the energy sector and confront powerful monopolies.
Mexico’s economy has stagnated, and growth may not reach the government’s tepid forecast of 1.8 percent. Mr. Peña Nieto’s plans for new investments in infrastructure to help jump-start the economy could be derailed by cleanup costs after the storms. Mexico’s construction trade association estimated that fixing the roads alone could cost more than $3 billion.
Still, the president said on Wednesday, these storms “will not paralyze the development that Mexico should have.”
The government reopened the main highway between Acapulco and Mexico City on Friday under blue skies, while officials farther north were just beginning to tally the damage from Manuel.
Tiny La Pintada mourned its missing Friday as soldiers continued to search the river of mud for victims. A police helicopter vanished in the region late Thursday, a sign of how perilous the mountain rescue effort was.
Many of La Pintada’s residents had been inside making lunch, which may have saved them, when the hillside collapsed Monday, Mr. Osorio Chong said. But the number of victims may rise, he added, as residents of nearby farms often waited in the town center to use the telephone there.
September 21, 2013, 7:32 PM Slide victim recovered as Mexico storm toll rises
Slide victim recovered as Mexico storm toll rises
Soldiers remove the body of a woman who was recovered from the site of a landslide in La Pintada, Mexico, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013. The village was the scene of the single greatest tragedy in destruction wreaked by the twin storms, Manuel and Ingrid, which simultaneously pounded both of Mexico's coasts. Using picks and shovels, soldiers and farmers removed dirt and rock from atop the cement or corrugated-metal roofs of houses looking for bodies in this town north of Acapulco, where 68 people were reported missing following Monday's slide. / AP PHOTO/EDUARDO VERDUGO
LA PINTADA, MEXICORescuers fighting tons of slippery, wet mud at the site of this week's worst storm disaster unearthed a woman's body Saturday, possibly one of68 missing in a massive landslide that buried half of the remote coffee-growing town of La Pintada.
Houses were filled to their roofs with dirt and vehicles were tossed on their sides when the hillside collapsed Monday afternoon after several days of rain brought by Tropical Storm Manuel, which along with Hurricane Ingrid gave Mexico a one-two punch last weekend.
"There is little hope now that we can find anyone alive," said President Enrique Pena Nieto after touring the devastation, adding that the landslide covered at least 40 homes.
Pena Nieto told the townspeople that La Pintada would be relocated and rebuilt nearby in a better location as officials responded to a wave of criticism that negligence and corruption were to blame for the vast devastation caused by two relatively weak storm systems.
Deadly floods in Mexico
Authorities on Saturday also found the wreckage of a Federal Police helicopter that was working on the rescue when it went missing Thursday. All aboard died, though officials still could not confirm late in the day how many were aboard.
All week in Mexico City, editorials and public commentary said the government had made natural disasters worse because of poor planning, lack of a prevention strategy and corruption.
"Governments aren't responsible for the occurrence of severe weather, but they are for the prevention of the effects," wrote Mexico's nonprofit Center of Investigation for Development in an online editorial criticizing a federal program to improve infrastructure and relocate communities out of dangerous flood zones. "The National Water Program had good intentions but its execution was at best poor."
Ingrid and Manuel simultaneously pounded both of Mexico's coasts, killing at least 101 people, not including the helicopter crash victims or the 68 missing. Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong told Mexican media that the death toll could go as high as 200 in the coming days, nearing that of Hurricane Paulina, which hit Guerrero state in 1997 and caused one of Mexico's worst storm disasters.
Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre publicly confirmed that corruption and political dealings allowed housing to be built in dangerous areas where permits should have been rejected.
"The responsibility falls on authorities," Osorio Chong said in a press conference earlier in the week. "In some cases (the building) was in irregular zones, but they still gave the authorization."
Thousands of stranded tourists await airlift from Mexico flood zone
Both federal and state administrations are new and cited cases in the past, though Osorio Chong said that going forward, he is sure that Aguirre and the mayor of Acapulco will not allow flooded-out victims to return to high-risk areas.
In a meeting with hotel owners in Acapulco, Pena Nieto told the resort city that the reconstruction phase has begun, and that the government will help address the hoteliers' concerns, including improving the main thoroughfare from Mexico City, the Highway of the Sun, which was closed by slides and damage in the storm, cutting off access for days.
The highway reopened Friday, albeit with many detours skirting stretches damaged by flooding and landslides. As of Saturday, all of the stranded tourists had been able to leave Acapulco.
The Mexican government late Friday gave a list of damages from Ingrid and Manuel, which later gained hurricane force and rolled into the northern state of Sinaloa on Thursday morning.
The storms affected 24 of Mexico's 31 states and 371 municipalities, which are the equivalent of counties. More than 58,000 people were evacuated, with 43,000 taken to shelters. Nearly 1,000 donation centers have been set up around the country, with nearly 700 tons of aid arriving so far. Nearly 800,000 people lost power across the country, though the Federal Electricity Commission said 94 percent of service had been restored as of Saturday morning.
Seventy-two key highways were damaged, including main arteries that left Acapulco isolated for days, as thousands of tourists awaited airlifts out of the inundated resort city.
The investigations center, known as CIDAC for its initials in Spanish, said Mexico had not been hit by two simultaneous storms since 1958.
The editorial said that while rescue efforts and aid are indeed humanitarian, they also provide good images for opportunistic politicians.
Prevention "like that in developed countries, designed to avoid the negative impact of natural events on people, doesn't seem to sell advertising or create grateful constituents," read the editorial.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Lord Of The Lost Metal | Hamburg, DE Chris "The Lord" Harms is one of Germany’s most prolific musical talents in the gothic rock genre. In 2007, Chris recruited a lineup of musical talent to create the first Lord of the Lost album, Fears. The result is a dazzling mix of gothic and glam rock with electronic and progressive elements.
Butterfly Destination: Massive Mariposario Yeé Lo Beé Aims to Put Huatulco on the Map BY MMAECKLE : Thursday, September 19, 2013
Butterfly Beat
Monika Maeckle is a butterfly evangelist, caterpillar wrangler, Master Gardener, Monarch tagger and curious student of nature who loves the whole life cycle. You can reach her at butterflybeat@gmail.com.
Butterfly Destination: Massive Mariposario Yeé Lo Beé Aims to Put Huatulco on the Map
I’m no life lister–not for birds, nor for butterflies. Checking species off a list doesn’t do it for me.
My interest lies in tromping through nature, observing, enjoying–and occasionally touching and photographing–the life cycle. The closer-up and more tactile the experience, the better. That’s just one reason I enjoy raising butterflies at home. You can witness the whole process, up close and in person.
Dainty Sulphur egg spotted along a beach trail in Huatulco, Oaxaca Mexico. Photo by Monika Maeckle
That said, it’s always special to see new creatures in all their iterations–a new stage of caterpillar whose butterfly form you’ve experienced in the garden or eggs discovered on the underside of a host plant. You have to look to find them. Once you do, there’s no turning back.
You have to look to find them: caterpillar stage of the One-spotted prepona spotted in the archaelogic park in Huatulco, Mexico. Photo by Monika Maeckle
One of the best ways to do that is to travel to new places and venture into the wilds. Another is to visit a flyhouse, or butterfly exhibit, at a natural history museum, zoo, nature park or freestanding. I had the opportunity to partake in both types of butterflying recently on a trip to Huatulco, Mexico, which seems to be angling to position itself as a butterflying and birding destination.
Yeé Lo Beé, under construction in La Jabalina just minutes from ecotourism resort in Huatulco, Mexico, aims to be the largest mariposario or butterfly house in Mexico. Photo by Monika Maeckle
Huatulco is a great place for butterflies. Oaxaca probably has the highest number of butterfly species in Mexico, according to butterfly expert and guide book author Kim Garwood, who has written two volumes on Central American and Mexican butterflies. With beach, jungle, lowland selva and mountains, every kind of habitat is available, said Kim. ”When you have lots of different habitats and microhabitats, you have lots of plant diversity, which means lots of different butterfly species as well.”
Apart from the low jungle and high mountains of the Sierra Madre, Huatulco will soon offer one of the largest mariposarios, or butterfly houses, in Mexico. Yeé Lo Beé, which translates to “flower of heaven” in the Zapotec language of the native people of La Jabalina where the massive flyhouse is under construction, has been in development for two years and is scheduled to open in October.
Yeé Lo Beé biologist Ivonne Flores recently gave me, Kim Garwood and our Huatulco nature guide Cornelio Ramos Gabariel a tour of the the 75-acre site, almost a third of which will be devoted to a flyhouse, supporting plant nurseries, an “iguanario” or iguana exhibit, and other features. The ecopark will also feature a “butterfly liberation” area where visitors can release butterflies raised on the premises. Cost will likely run about $25 and the park will be geared to tourists and cruise ships who visit Huatulco for day trips.
Flores showed us the laboratory where the Yeé Lo Beé staff will produce all of the 1,000 butterflies that will occupy the 3000-square foot flyhouse each day with some 25 species of butterflies native to the Huatulco area. Flores oversees the lab as well as the three greenhouses where hundreds of host plants are tended by local people.
Yvonne Flores, staff biologist at Yeé Lo Beé in the lab with her favorite butterfly, the Kite-Swallowtail. Flores has been training locals to identify and help cultivate butterfly livestock for the mariposario. Photo by Monika Maeckle
Park developers have not enlisted outside expertise in planning or execution of the mariposarionor for securing its livestock, said Flores, choosing instead to grow their own. It’s relatively uncommon and extremely ambitious for such a large-scale project to produce its own livestock, especially with such a wide variety of species.
What a beauty! Flores shows off her favorite butterfly at Yeé lo Bée in Huatulco, Mexico. Photo by Monika Maeckle
“It’s not common,” said Nigel Venters, a longtime butterfly breeder and consultant to the butterfly breeding business based in Argentina. Venters has worked with flyhouses all over the world–from Saudi Arabia and England to Costa Rica and New York. “There are very few flyhouses that raise a big percentage of what they display. This is not easy and takes many years of experience.”
We applaud the effort and look forward to visiting again once it’s open.
According to the institutional video, Yeé Lo Beé is founded “by a group of people passionate about the responsible use of nature.” Founder and Mexican impresario Genaro Gomez categorized the massive project as “Not a personal project. It’s a project of Huatulqueños, and all the people that work in Huatulco.”
A Julia butterfly at Llano Grande Mariposario or “Butterfly Camp” near Huatulco, Mexico. Photo by Susan Ford-Hoffert
Another mariposario, less ambitious and further from the main tourist center, lies about an hour away. Llano Grande, a project of the Zapotec community, offers a modest butterfly house with a handful of species in their various stages. School groups, locals and adventurous tourists mingle along the circular path inside, as a local cook whips up fajitas and elotes (grilled corn) in a large palapa.
The destination sits on the banks of the LLano Grande river (no relation to our own Llano River in the Texas Hill Country) and offers a lovely waterfall for bathing as well as an enormous food palapa and event area. A souvenir stand and swimming area beckon and a plant nursery operates seasonally, offering plants used in traditional medicine. Llano Grande offers a different, more local experience than you’ll expect at the grand Yeé lo Beé. Cost to enter is about $3.
Each of these adventures presents different charms. Add a butterflying trip to the jungle and mountains and your Mexican butterfly adventure will be complete.
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