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When Hurricane Otis cut Acapulco off from the world, dozens of clients’ employees were missing, and a government response had yet to materialise. With little information coming out of disaster zone, waiting was not an option. Forty-eight hours later, every client employee had been safely evacuated.
A storm no one saw coming
No one expected the tropical storm forming off Mexico's Pacific coast to become a major threat. Overnight, that assumption collapsed. In the early hours of 25 October, Hurricane Otis intensified with extraordinary speed before making landfall as a category 5 on Mexico's western coast.
The damage was immediate and total. Winds of up to 165 mile per hour and heavy rainfall destroyed infrastructure, downed power lines and cut off all communication. Roads were blocked, supply chains ground to a halt and access to basic necessities quickly became scarce. Opportunistic crime and looting added to an already volatile environment.
As the scale of the disaster began to emerge, clients turned to Control Risks for support.
A city without answers
In any major crisis, the first challenge is rarely action. It’s understanding what is happening.
Across Acapulco, client personnel were scattered. Some had managed to send brief text messages to family members before communications failed. Others had gone completely silent. Their locations, condition and immediate needs were unknown.
Working alongside client crisis management teams, Control Risks rapidly pieced together fragmented information from multiple sources. Every message, phone call and reported sighting helped build a clearer picture of conditions on the ground.
As information slowly emerged, one reality became increasingly clear. Waiting for conditions to improve was not a strategy.
The decision not to wait
By mid-morning, only some employees had been confirmed safe, though stranded. Many others were unaccounted for.
With no clear timeline for a government-led response and conditions continuing to deteriorate, Control Risks made a decision: rather than wait for access, we would create it.
A self-sufficient response team was assembled immediately. The first deployment consisted of two SUVs, each staffed by a driver and navigator and stocked with food, fuel, water and medical supplies. Preparation was critical. The team had to assume that little or no support would be available once they entered the disaster zone.
Damaged roads, debris and washed-out routes created constant obstacles on the 400-kilometer journey into Acapulco. By the time the team reached the city, the operation was already evolving. Some client personnel were sheltering in hotels. Others had left accommodation in search of supplies, information or assistance.
Locating people across a city that had effectively gone dark became a race against time. Working methodically, the team identified and accounted for employees one by one. As individuals were located, they were gathered at a secure central location where plans for extraction could be coordinated.
Getting everyone out
Reaching Acapulco was only the beginning. The next challenge was moving everyone safely out.
Once all client personnel had been accounted for, Control Risks briefed employees on the extraction plan and coordinated their movement from the city. Additional vehicles and buses were mobilised to support the evacuation effort. The operation demanded careful planning, real-time decision-making and continuous situational awareness. Routes had to be assessed, conditions monitored and contingencies prepared.
The outcome was decisive. Every client employee was safely evacuated from Acapulco and transported to Mexico City.
What Acapulco taught us
A successful response still deserves scrutiny. Looking back, the operation’s defining factor was the ability to establish access and act before complete information was available.
Had we waited for communications to be restored, roads to reopen or government support to arrive, dozens of people could have remained exposed to growing risks for far longer. Instead, by deploying early, operating independently and building situational awareness in real time, we were able to restore certainty where very little existed.
Organisations need partners that can operate in uncertainty, establish access when others cannot and act decisively when every hour matters.
The lesson from Acapulco is simple: in a major disaster, information often arrives slowly. Risk does not.
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