San Juan Cosala and the Big Storm, Continued

We went down to the main highway, or carretera, where this picture shows mud, large equipment, people and trucks. We went several blocks along there, getting our shoes wet and muddy, in my case well over my ankles due to a bad guess about the roadway. After that I stopped worrying and walked anywhere.



We chatted with a number of people, including a friend of ours. He said that his grandparents had lost their house. It was this one that we had just walked past on the carretera:



Water was still flowing through it, though not a lot by this time. I asked where they were, and he said they had gone to the plaza, where bedding, food, diapers, and other things were being distributed. I wanted to go down there but it would have been quite a muddy walk and we decided not to.

We've heard that a number of people were hurt, but nobody we spoke to knew of anyone who had died, though there may have been some. No way to know from here at this point.

I asked several local people if this had in fact been a waterspout, and the consensus was yes. There was one some ten years ago in this area, but nobody remembered any since then.

I have been very impressed with the government response. Quite early this morning, a helicopter landed in our neighborhood and I talked with the two officials, who were there to assess the situation. They were able to tell me that San Juan Cosala had borne the brunt of the storm, though they hadn't yet been to Jocotepec to our west, where it was still raining. I heard the helicopter take off over an hour later, and in fact there have been helicopters around all day.

Here, a truck of firemen is following an ambulance which had come out from the city of Guadalajara to help. There are many, many firemen and other officials, as well as many local people, helping out. The general atmosphere is friendly. We've chatted with a lot of people in the streets.



Kelly and I feel very grateful that we suffered no damage. The night before this, we'd had a leak directly over my side of the bed, and I'd put a raincoat and towel over my spot and slept on the sofa until the rainstorm passed. Yesterday Kelly had been able to find and replace a broken tile that was the cause of the leak. Not a drop came through there this morning.

Well, that's about all I know at this point.