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| People and press respond to hurricane onslaught |
| by Ed Hutmacher
November 4, 2002. |
Cleaning up Hurricane Kenna's aftermath is proving
to be a dual lesson in civic resourcefulness and media intrigue. Within
minutes of Kenna's last bluster, heavy equipment, dozens of trucks--modest to
massive--and literally thousands of worker-citizens swarmed Puerto Vallarta's
downtown and launched into the city's largest and most important cleanup effort
in its history. Much was to be done and much is at stake. People
and machines labored together to remove boulders, broken glass, pitched autos,
concrete slabs--some the width and length of a car--tons upon tons of beach-sand
and other debris strewn over the streets and into buildings by the hurricane's
powerful waves and wind. Owners worked side-by-side with employees,
neighbors were joined by family and friends to sift through mud and sand, knee-deep
floodwater satiated with scum and bacteria in desperate, heartbreaking efforts
to salvage some of the contents of their businesses and homes. By
the following morning the painstaking work of scouring the insides and outsides
of buildings began. Walls, windows and floors were washed clean, furniture and
furnishings carefully disassembled and laid out to dry, clothing and merchandise
accounted for. What these amazing people of Puerto Vallarta
accomplished in so little time and with so much verve humbles me. Getting
"back on our feet" is their rallying cry not just because of economic
necessity--livelihoods are dependent on cash flow--but also to show the world
that recovery is imminent. Most merchants expect to be back
in business within a week or two. Owners of some of the most severely damaged
restaurants along the beaches believe they will be welcoming customers back by
Thanksgiving. The clean-up appears to be well underway and,
surprisingly, may be the easiest task to get done. Not so easy will be convincing
tourists that all is well in idyllic Puerto Vallarta. The
breathtaking publicity generated by media coverage of Hurricane Kenna and news
reports on the real damage it caused is something public officials and tourism
leaders are deeply concerned about -- 90% of the local economy is dependent on
travelers coming here and spending money. Puerto Vallarta
had just begun to believe it had suffered through the worse of a two year-long
tourist recession and was looking forward to an anticipated recovery this season.
Kenna's onslaught is reverberating beyond the material damage done here. Tourist
reaction to what happened and what's happening now is hugely important. It's taken
a lot of years, a lot of hard work and a lot money for Puerto Vallarta to earn
its top-ten ranking of most popular tourist destinations in the world. Public
perception and image isn't easily measured in dollars and cents the way repairing
a building is. The press focused most of its attention on
the notable damage to Puerto Vallarta's popular tourist areas -- the mile-long
Malecon and the businesses that front it, the beachfront restaurants that were
swept asunder, and various hotel-resorts whose beautiful swimming pools, garden
terraces and lobbies were swamped and made unusable or uninhabitable. Because
these are the most visible and popular places frequented by tourists and because
they suffered and show the most obvious damage, we shouldn't wonder that the media
chose to broadcast those agonizing images to the world. After all, they are the
same places and sights most often photographed by tourists. Ironically, they are
also the same places and sights tourism officials use in pre-Kenna promotional
pictures to entice travelers to Puerto Vallarta. The rumblings
by locals seem mostly criticism of the media's "cut and run" mentality
that sensationalizes the havoc wreaked by the hurricane but doesn't care to stick
around and report the recovery effort and the indomitable spirit of Puerto Vallarta.
Those stories are still unfolding and, sooner or later, they will be told. The
complaint by locals is that Puerto Vallarta wants them told now! Rebuilding
and repairing the material damage done to Puerto Vallarta by Hurricane Kenna will
take some months. How much rebuilding and repairing to the damage done to its
image as a world-class resort destination still has to be sorted out. You can
bet that some very important people with pretty sharp minds and who have a lot
at stake in making correct judgment calls are busy, at this very moment, fleshing
out some of the right questions to ask and best answers to give. Any
body out there want to contribute their own. Ed
Hutmacher.
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