Mexico Flooded
I just spent a good hour watching the Mexican news feed on satellite TV and virtually the entire time was spent on the flooding in central Mexico. Seriously, the entire center of the entire center of the country is starting to look like New Orleans during Katrina. It's horrible. The water level has reached 1.5 meters in many areas. In Michoacan, which is my home state and which full of lakes, damns, rivers, and smallers streams, is also full of hills and mountains and there are towns that are covered in mud. Three kids already died because a mudslide tore their house down during dinnertime.
Its horrible, and besides the damn sadness that all the despair of the brings to me, there are two things that piss me off.
1) I wanted to post a link from a reliable news source in English, so that you could all read a proper piece on the subject, but I couldn't find a damn thing that truly expresses whats going on. Granted, its also hard to find an accurate account of the flooding and logistical breakdown thanks to bribery by European and American tourists in Machu Pichu, so I guess that, at least, shouldn't make me left out, right?
2) The anchorman on the news kept mentioning how the Mexican infrastructure was so horrible that it led to all this, and how the politicians are just going to put all their blame, back on mother nature. See the thing is, I'm the first to say most of the Mexican government is one big ball of fucking corruption. It simply is, but, and this is a big but, Mexico DOES NOT generally get much, IF ANY, rain in the winter. Mexico gets rain from tropical storms and hurricanes IN THE SUMMER. This is well known, and the best to do maintenance on the sewer systems and drainage whatever-they're-called is when its dry, and aren't drowning under the rain filled passages. So yeah, when the government says the lack of draining of rain water from the streets was due to maintenance on the infrastructure, I'm gonna believe them, 'cause hey, it makes sense.
And hey, never in my life have I seen Mexico suffer so much continuous rain in winter, and according to my dad, who's all of 60, he hasn't either. So yeah, Mexico wasn't ready for it.
On the plus side, we do see that Mexicans do end up helping each other out during times of crisis. The bus drivers out of a particular city decide, out of their own free will, to ferry people out of a badly flooded are, free of charge, and also make house calls to people stuck in their homes.
I know everyone right now is very invested in Haiti, myself included, but I do ask that you keep Mexico in your thoughts as well.
Thank you.
Its horrible, and besides the damn sadness that all the despair of the brings to me, there are two things that piss me off.
1) I wanted to post a link from a reliable news source in English, so that you could all read a proper piece on the subject, but I couldn't find a damn thing that truly expresses whats going on. Granted, its also hard to find an accurate account of the flooding and logistical breakdown thanks to bribery by European and American tourists in Machu Pichu, so I guess that, at least, shouldn't make me left out, right?
2) The anchorman on the news kept mentioning how the Mexican infrastructure was so horrible that it led to all this, and how the politicians are just going to put all their blame, back on mother nature. See the thing is, I'm the first to say most of the Mexican government is one big ball of fucking corruption. It simply is, but, and this is a big but, Mexico DOES NOT generally get much, IF ANY, rain in the winter. Mexico gets rain from tropical storms and hurricanes IN THE SUMMER. This is well known, and the best to do maintenance on the sewer systems and drainage whatever-they're-called is when its dry, and aren't drowning under the rain filled passages. So yeah, when the government says the lack of draining of rain water from the streets was due to maintenance on the infrastructure, I'm gonna believe them, 'cause hey, it makes sense.
And hey, never in my life have I seen Mexico suffer so much continuous rain in winter, and according to my dad, who's all of 60, he hasn't either. So yeah, Mexico wasn't ready for it.
On the plus side, we do see that Mexicans do end up helping each other out during times of crisis. The bus drivers out of a particular city decide, out of their own free will, to ferry people out of a badly flooded are, free of charge, and also make house calls to people stuck in their homes.
I know everyone right now is very invested in Haiti, myself included, but I do ask that you keep Mexico in your thoughts as well.
Thank you.