2. Focus on Texts

2.1. Read the following article and complete the exercises that follow.

333 Confirmed dead in Mexico floods

TEZIUTLAN, Mexico — It did not even have a name, the storm responsible for what the president called Mexico’s worst disaster of the decade. Its winds never reached the tropical-storm speed that would have earned it more than a number.

But Tropical Depression No. 11 was deadlier than any hurricane in the region this year.

So far, officials have confirmed 333 deaths. But by all accounts the true number of dead is higher. Unofficial counts by local newspapers — based on unconfirmed accounts from local officials and witnesses — ran as high as 600.

The full scale of the disaster is only slowly becoming apparent. A series of weather fronts, capped by the tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico, dumped heavy rain on much of eastern, southern and central Mexico for a week or more. In much of the region, it continues to rain.

Washed-out bridges and roads isolated hundreds of communities. Landslides destroyed or damaged houses in dozens of towns and villages. People were carried away by floodwaters.

Even large cities, such as the Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa, were so gravely flooded that streets became canals for boats ferrying furniture from inundated houses.

In Tenango, 100 miles northeast of Mexico City, a foot-wide crack appeared in the face of a turn-of-the-century, U.S.-built dam, which towers 70 feet above the town.

Authorities evacuated 3,000 residents and brought in a fleet of dump trucks to pile gravel and rock mixed with lime in front of the dam. They worked into the night Sunday.

“The engineers thought it was going to break,” said evacuee Jose Luis Gonzalez, 40.

In Teziutlan, where the largest number of deaths have been recorded, rain fell for 60 hours without a break — 30 inches in all, three-quarters of what New York gets in an entire year.

The rain forced closure of schools and most of the 480 clothing factories that make blue jeans and other goods for U.S. export.

So the residents of La Aurora, a poor neighborhood built under a cliffside cemetery, were huddled at home rather than at work or school when the mudslide rolled over their houses.

The rain had been pounding for three days when Dario Padilla left his house and made the sodden trek to a shop to buy tortillas.

He was on his way back, with about 100 yards to go, when he saw the hillside above his neighborhood collapse in an avalanche of mud. Within seconds his house, the houses of two relatives and about 25 other neighbors’ homes were buried.

His wife, his stepchildren and several grandchildren were among those killed.

“It took all my family in one blow,” said the 55-year-old retired postal worker, his voice breaking as he watched ambulances carry victims to the morgue and a series of funeral processions trudge into the cemetery next door.

“I went in but I sank in the mud. Some neighbors pulled me out,” he said.

By Sunday morning, rescue workers had pulled the corpses of 15 people from the ruins of Padilla's house and his relatives' two homes.

The victims included his wife, five of his stepchildren and several grandchildren and in-laws. Every member of his household was apparently killed.

On Sunday, hundreds of soldiers, policemen, firefighters and body-detecting dogs were still slopping through mud made even more sodden by more heavy rain. They scraped mud away from toppled concrete walls, then attacked the walls with clanging picks and sledgehammers until the sick-sweet smell of decaying flesh told them they were close to yet another victim.

At the town’s cathedral, the regional bishop, Monsignor Lorenzo Cardenas Aregullin, led a Mass for the victims of the disaster, and read a message of condolence from Pope John Paul II.

“Why does God conserve our lives?” the bishop asked. “So we can be human. So we can help (the victims) however we can.”

Outside the cathedral, residents complained that government help had been late in coming. When neighbors were pulling bodies from the muck on Tuesday, they said, radio stations were reporting that there were no apparent problems in the region. The military, which is leading the rescue effort, didn’t arrive until Thursday afternoon.

Many have urged President Ernesto Zedillo to call for foreign aid, but Zedillo has said: “The Mexicans can do it alone.”

He toured the stricken areas Friday and Saturday and pledged to send more civilian and military personnel to help the victims throughout states along the Gulf of Mexico.

“We won’t fail you,” he promised Saturday night.

Washington Post. 1999. 20 June.