Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on August 23, 2007.
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2007 > August > 23
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Hurricane Dean takes on Mexico City and wins
Even under perfect conditions, Mexico City’s infrastructure lives on the edge of chaos. Throw in a torrential downpour - like the one that soaked this city yesterday as a result of Hurricane Dean - and the city’s traffic grid seizes like an engine without oil.
The hurricane left historic rainfall amounts in the capital and officials reported that the city’s drainage system reached its maximum capacity at about 8 p.m., just as the rains began to slacken. Whole neighborhoods flooded with filthy black water; major thoroughfares were covered with several feet of water.
When we flew into the airport yesterday evening, fresh from covering Dean’s ravages in the Yucatan, we found the city effectively shut down. It took our cursing taxi driver almost two hours to navigate the gridlocked streets near the airport. It was a terrifying ride, quite frankly, but it seemed as though some unseen algorithm kept the cars from colliding no matter how fast they darted through the smallest of spaces.