Mexico floods recede as thousands more evacuated

|PIC1|VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico - Thousands more people were plucked from rooftops in southern Mexico on Sunday even as floods that have left 800,000 people homeless in Tabasco state began to recede, authorities said.

The army evacuated 5,000 people in a four-hour operation with 14 helicopters, police official Daniel Montiel said, while trucks brought food and bottled water to some 600 overcrowded shelters struggling to provide enough meals and dry beds.

Army officials estimated another 80,000 people were still trapped in flooded homes, local media reported. Aerial images showed the area resembling a huge lake with just the tops of roofs poking through.

Despite fog and rain, nearly 40,000 people had been evacuated by army and navy teams in helicopters and boats, the local government in Tabasco said. Some flood victims even tried to grab onto hovering helicopters.

President Felipe Calderon was in Tabasco on Sunday to unveil plans for damage repair in the waterlogged region. He called the flood, which affected around half the state's 2 million residents, one of the worst natural catastrophes in Mexico's modern history.

Only one death has been reported in Tabasco, although in the poor southern state of Chiapas, local government officials reported four fatalities on Sunday after rain-swollen rivers burst their banks, damaging thousands of homes and 16 bridges.

Tabasco Gov. Andres Granier said flood levels that had reached 19 feet (6 metres) at their peak were dropping on Sunday despite drizzling rain, and Conagua, the national water commission, said no rain was forecast for the next three days.

"Conditions continue to improve in terms of the water flowing away," Conagua spokesman Gilberto Segovia told reporters.

On Friday, people and livestock swam through streets neck-high in murky brown water.

Thousands of Tabascans fled by bus on Friday and Saturday to the neighboring states of Veracruz and Campeche, and tempers frayed among those left as people hunted for relatives and fought over dwindling food and drinking water supplies.

A supermarket in the state capital Villahermosa and several trucks were looted, and some stores ran out of goods, although water supply was being restored and army helicopters dropped food packages.

The floods, some of the worst the low-lying region has seen in 50 years, were triggered when heavy rain this week caused the Grijalva River to swell and burst through sandbags.