Mexican Soldiers Help Out in Aftermath of Hurricane Delta

Roughly 5,000 Mexican soldiers have been helping out after Hurricane Delta caused extensive flooding and property damage on that country’s Yucatan Peninsula.

The soldiers’ actions are part of an operation dubbed Plan DN-III-E, which was announced by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a press conference on Oct. 6.

The plan, also known as the Civil Relief and Aid Plan for Disasters, calls for Mexican armed forces to help citizens, both locally and in some cases abroad, after natural disasters or ones caused by human activity.

Soldiers transport household items by boat through the flood in an unknown location on an unknown date. (Defensa Nacional/Newsflash)

The announcement came just one day before Hurricane Delta made landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula, including the popular Riviera Maya tourist spot on the Caribbean coast, in the early hours of Oct. 7.

There have been no reports of casualties or estimates on the expected costs of the damages left behind from the hurricane in Mexico. However, authorities are expected to start that assessment soon.

A variety of videos have been posted showing members of the Mexican armed forces helping locals in various ways, including:

  • Several soldiers carrying an injured man across a flooded area to a residence on higher ground.
  • Soldiers walking in a flooded street with water up to their stomachs as they help a man bearing some personal belongings to safety.
  • A military vehicle being used to transport civilians through water that covers the entire bottom half of the vehicle.
  • Soldiers using chainsaws to remove fallen trees from the middle of the road.

Thousands of locals and tourists were forced to either evacuate or find a safe place to ride out the storm, which at one point had grown into a category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of up to 156 mph. It was subsequently downgraded to a strong category 2 (sustained winds of up to 110 mph) when it traversed the peninsula and then moved into the Gulf of Mexico.

Soldiers transport household items by boat through the flood in an unknown location on an unknown date. (Defensa Nacional/Newsflash)

The storm is expected to make landfall again in Louisiana, midday on Oct. 9. That state has been hit by numerous hurricanes in the last 15 years, including the massive category 5 (sustained winds of 157 mph and up) Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005. That hurricane killed more than 1,800 people and caused an estimated $125 billion in damages, most of which occurred in the city of New Orleans.

Hurricane Delta is the 25th named storm of this year’s storm season to date The record for the most storms named in a year is 28, which was set in 2005.

(Edited by Matthew Hall and Fern Siegel)



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