Thread: ACA: Major Storm Damage,Tourists Stranded..Nonrevs Beware..

Thousands of exhausted, hungry and increasingly despondent tourists lined up late into the night on a muddy road outside a military base for a chance to get home on one of two precious air bridges out of this famed beach resort isolated by landslides set off by Tropical Storm Manuel.With the twin roads to Mexico City closed down, at least 40,000 tourists saw a long holiday beach weekend degenerate into a desperate struggle to get weeping children, elderly parents and even a few damp, bedraggled dogs back home.
Two of Mexico's largest airlines were running about two flights an hour from Acapulco's still-flooded international airport Tuesday, with priority for those with tickets, the elderly and families with young children.
Everyone else who couldn't wait for the government's promise to reopen the roads within two days flocked to Air Base 7 about 20 minutes north of Acapulco, where a military air bridge made up of barely more than a dozen aircraft ferried tourists to Mexico City. The normally quiet beach-front installation was transformed into a scene from a conflict zone.
The death toll rose to 47 Tuesday from the unusual one-two punch of a tropical storm and a hurricane hitting Mexico at nearly the same time. Authorities scrambled to get help into, and stranded tourists out of, the cutoff resort city of Acapulco.
With roads blocked by landslides, rockslides, floods and collapsed bridges, Acapulco was cut off from road transport after Tropical Storm Manuel made landfall on Sunday. The terminal at the city's international airport was flooded, but not the landing strips.