Authorities said massive floods in southern Mexico have destroyed or damaged the homes of as many as half a million people, as rescue workers focused Sunday on reaching isolated communities surrounded by water for almost a week, according to AP. Getting the sick and injured out _ and vital supplies like food and water in _ replaced mass evacuations as the priority for emergency workers in Tabasco and Chiapas states, where the widespread floods have caused 8 deaths. Many who decided to stay on rooftops to protect their homes from looters were running low on supplies, as were residents of cut-off communities, as the flooding entered its second week. «We spent days without food. We thought we were going to die,» said Marta Vidal, 47, who was evacuated by helicopter. In the Tabasco state capital, Villahermosa, some desperate residents broke into shuttered stores and took food and household goods. «We are focusing on selective evacuations and bringing in supplies,» said Daniel Montiel Ortiz, who oversaw helicopter rescue efforts for the federal police. Ortiz called the outbreaks of looting «isolated incidents.» After water covered about 80 percent of Tabasco's already swampy Gulf coast territory, authorities struggled to calculate the damages; the federal Social Development Department estimated that the homes of 400,000 to 500,000 people were damaged or destroyed. Civil defense officials in Chiapas state, which borders Guatemala, reported finding seven bodies: five adults swept away by swollen rivers, a 25-year-old undocumented Honduran migrant who drowned while trying to cross a river and an 8-year-old girl who fell from a bridge. In Tabasco _ where one man died earlier in the week _ river levels began to recede slightly. Still, the state capital remained largely flooded and prey to horrifying rumors _ that crocodiles, which normally live along the banks of some rivers, had invaded the murky floodwaters in the city's center, or that the dam upstream was about to burst. The Tabasco state government said the dam was not in danger, but had no immediate comment on crocodiles. Health authorities reported cases of eye, skin, intestinal and respiratory infections, but no mass outbreak of waterborne diseases that many had feared. President Felipe Calderon, who was scheduled to tour the disaster area again on Sunday, has called it one of Mexico's worst recent natural disasters.
