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A young man is receiving medical care in the municipality of Alamo, Veracruz state, Mexico, on October 12, 2025. — AFP
Rosalia Ortega, standing beside her sister’s lifeless body, felt grateful she had found her in the mud-filled river that suddenly washed away her house amid relentless rains pounding her mountain town in Mexico.
Since Thursday, at least 47 lives have been lost as flooding has caused extensive destruction in the hardest-hit states of Hidalgo, Puebla, Queretaro, and Veracruz.
“We’re sad, but at least we’ll give her a proper Christian burial,” Ortega, age 76, told AFP in Huauchinango, Puebla—a state east of Mexico City that reports nine fatalities and significant damage.
The affected area is part of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range, running parallel to Mexico’s eastern coast, populated with villages still waiting for telecommunications and other services to be restored.
On Thursday night, a mountain river swollen with rain overflowed its banks in Huauchinango, instantly depriving residents of their homes and, in some cases, their loved ones.
Maria Salas, a 49-year-old cook taking cover from the rain under an umbrella, watched as two soldiers guarded the neighborhood entrance. She lost five relatives when their house collapsed, and her own home was destroyed by a landslide.
“I can’t retrieve my belongings, I can’t sleep there,” she said. “I have nothing left.”
Families are now struggling to pay funeral costs and, if possible, recover belongings from their damaged or lost homes.
Huauchinango, home to about 100,000 people, is one of the largest towns in the disaster zone and among the few accessible on Saturday.
Mudflows swept away everything in their path, creating heavy rivers of sludge that made even intact homes uninhabitable.
Petra Rodriguez, 40, a domestic worker, described her experience: “It was knee-deep.” She, her husband, and two sons managed to escape, holding hands tightly to ensure no one was left behind if the water pulled one of them under.
In another part of town, teacher Karina Galicia, 49, showed AFP her house, now damaged by mud and mold. She and her family escaped in time; had they not, she believes, they would have been buried alive.
In slightly less affected homes, neighbors worked diligently to remove water using plastic bottles, brooms, and shovels.
Adriana Vazquez, 48, climbed a rugged, mud-strewn path to see if anything remained of a relative’s house. She found a jumble of wooden and tin structures flattened by a landslide, with soldiers operating a backhoe to clear debris from the street.
Her relative answered the phone, though her voice was faint; Vazquez hopes that was due to poor connection rather than loss of contact.
About 100 small communities are without contact due to blocked roads and power outages disrupting communications and travel.
2025 has been marked by unusually heavy rains across Mexico, with rainfall records even set in Mexico City. Meteorologist Isidro Cano explained to AFP that this week’s intense weather resulted from seasonal shifts and cloud formations caused by warm, humid Gulf of Mexico air rising to the mountain peaks.
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