Forget the storm drains and shelters. Mexico has decided to fight the 1998-99 hurricane season with a much more cerebral weapon - information.
Civil Protection chief Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa said he planned to use the Internet and radio and television spots to persuade Mexicans to protect themselves from bad weather and ward off a repeat of last year's disaster in the Pacific resort of Acapulco, when Hurricane Pauline killed hundreds of people."We can decrease the risk (of a repeat of Pauline), but we can't avoid it completely," Ruiz told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
Ruiz said an improved warning system was the central plank in his agency's strategy to save Mexican lives this year.
"The more information you give people, the more probability you can reduce the effect (of hurricanes). If our information saves a life, I will be satisfied. If a life is lost due to lack of information, I will feel our work has failed."
The Mexican government was accused of not giving people in the way of Pauline enough warning last October when the storm hit. Its 115 mph winds ripped apart 50,000 peasant homes in the Pacific coast states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, and killed at least 400 people.
Weather experts have told the Mexican government to expect 26 tropical storms this season. Of those, up to four in the Gulf of Mexico and two in the Pacific will develop into intense hurricanes, rivaling the power of Pauline.
Ruiz said the civil protection service was prepared this time and had almost completed designing a home page on the Internet to keep officials in vulnerable communities informed.
He said his agency, part of the Interior Ministry, had been working for months on making storm warnings understandable to ordinary people.
Noting that most people don't understand technical jargon like "wind force four" and "pluvial precipitation," Ruiz said, "We are taking this information and translating it into easy language." He added that the hurricane home page would be up and running soon.
Initial Internet warnings would then be followed by regular adverts on television and radio warning residents of threatened communities and telling them how to protect themselves.