Newborns transferred from flooded hospital after storm in Mexico
Mexico City (dpa) - A severe storm with hail caused flooding north of the Mexican capital, Mexico City, and also left a hospital in distress.
On the ground floor of the Dr Salvador Gonzalez Herrejon Hospital in Atizapan de Zaragoza, the water was more than 30 centimetres high after heavy rain on Monday evening, the newspaper El Heraldo and other media reported.
Videos and photos showed staff and emergency workers wading through the water to move newborns into incubators and patients in their beds to higher floors.
An employee of the hospital of Atizapan, in the zone Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico north of Mexico City, transports a medical machine after the hospital was flooded by extreme rainfall with hail. Some of the patients were moved to higher floors, but some still had to stay in the water.
The mayor of Atizapan, Ruth Olvera Nieto, even spoke in a letter of almost 1 metre of floodwater in the hospital. In the letter, which she published on Twitter, she asked Mexico's Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero and authorities in the state of Mexico - where Atizapan de Zaragoza is located - for support.
The municipality's emergency services were insufficient to cope with the scale of this "climatological phenomenon," Olvera Nieto wrote.
Employees of the hospital of Atizapan, in the zone Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico north of Mexico City, transport a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after the hospital was flooded by extreme rainfall with hail. Some of the patients were moved to higher floors, but some still had to stay in the water.
The floods collapsed the sewage system in Atizapan and the surrounding municipalities. Cars were washed away.
Employees of the hospital of Atizapan, in the zone Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico north of Mexico City, transport a patient after the hospital was flooded by extreme rainfall with hail. Some of the patients were moved to higher floors, but some still had to stay in the water.
The storm also hit other municipalities in the state of Mexico: In addition to Atizapan de Zaragoza, Tlalnepantla was also particularly badly affected, according to media reports.
(Reporting by Angelika Engler in Berlin)