Bay Area Residents Struggle To Get Out Of Cabo San Lucas After Hurricane Odile
CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (KPIX 5) -- Bay Area travelers are among the thousands of vacationers trapped in a devastated Cabo San Lucas, Mexico following Hurricane Odile's path of destruction.
KPIX 5 senior technician Rich Viglienzoni has two daughters, Lia and Adriana, among the stranded Baja California travelers.
PHOTOS: Escape From Cabo San Lucas
"I was extremely nervous from Saturday night," said Viglienzoni. "My wife and I both felt much better when we got word that they were OK, that they survived."
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Their daughters were in Cabo for Lia's bachelorette party this past weekend.
Viglienzoni said his daughters' hotel is in tatters, with no food and no water, along with no clean clothes among the group of friends staying there.
"Two of the girls who went lost their luggage," said Viglienzoni. "It was evidently swept away, or, blown away, or something like that."
Adriana does have a medical condition and only enough medicine for a couple more days.
They were moved to rooms on a lower floor, right next to a room full of flamingos put there for safe-keeping.
They have no idea right now how they will be coming home. The airport is heavily damaged and won't open until at least this weekend. The wedding is scheduled a week after that.
"There's going to be a lot of disappointed people and an awful lot of wasted money if that doesn't happen."
Some people were getting out. Bay Area resident Brian Spatz didn't know how he would get out, with the airport closed. But he and his buddies went anyway and were rewarded with a lift out of Cabo to Tijuana aboard a Mexican Air Force jet.
"When we got there there were thousands of people there," said Spatz. "We were lined up, and waiting outside the airport, for an hour and the line kept moving and they kept filling planes, and we were the second plane out to TJ."
The only other airport option is more than 300 miles away, through the mountains and on roads that also could be damaged.
"It's just completely devastated, everything was leveled," said Spatz. "Power poles on the ground. Windows that had blown out. Buildings that had fallen over."
Mexico's Interior Ministry said both military and commercial planes were carrying travelers free of charge out of Los Cabos International Airport, which was still closed Tuesday.
Hurricane Odile was downgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday and was expected to hit Arizona as a tropical depression on Wednesday.
