HURRICANE PAULINE: A MEXICAN CASE OF A NATURAL HAZARD

Hurricanes are migratory tropical cyclones, with strong winds and rains that originate on the oceans in some regions next to the Equator. Hurricanes are the most extended and harmful natural catastrophes because they produce damage both through the action of the wind and through flooding.

The cost of damages to infrastructures and human losses in natural disasters depend on the quantity of the population and the quality of life. Developing countries suffer the greatest consequences in the face of natural disasters.

Mexico suffers many annual economic and social losses from hurricanes and floods, since it is affected by four of the six generating regions of hurricanes in the world.

The aim is to analyze the anthropic cost of Hurricane Paulina that took place in the Mexican south Pacific in October of 1997. Special emphasis will be given to the city of Acapulco, state of Guerrero, Mexico.

Hurricane Paulina began as a tropical depression that moved towards the east, as a tropical storm her movement changed towards the West, touching land with a category 4 and going inland passing to become category 3. Instead of vanishing, it increments its power to category 4 always following a trajectory on the coastal plain towards the West; which makes it a unique hurricane due to its trajectory.

The city of Acapulco has a population of 620,656 inhabitants and it has a large hotel infrastructure so that it is a tourist destination of great importance.

In this work the affected colonies are analyzed and compared to those not affected taking into consideration the characteristics of the location according to the lay of the land and its vicinity to streams or ravines.

It is important to have enough previous warning about hurricanes taking into account the important role that the massive means of communication play.

In this work, original photographic material is exhibited in which we observed the great impact that the inhabited areas suffered due to the size and to the quantity of transported huge blocks.

The quantified damages allow estimating their economic cost within the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the numerous losses of life, missing persons, wounded and damages to the population's health as well.

The enormous damages suffered by this meteorological event allow us to conclude that an opportune prevention is better than late mitigation.