There is "almost no hope" of finding alive the 68 people missing after a monster landslide buried a southern Mexican village after two devastating storms, President Enrique Pena Nieto says.
"There is virtually no hope that we can find anyone alive" in La Pintada, the president said during a press conference on Saturday with members of his cabinet in Guerrero state, the hardest hit by twin storms that have since dissipated.
Mexico faces the Herculean task of rebuilding after a rare double onslaught of storms, with nearly 170 people feared dead in the path of destruction.
The death toll in the tragedy soared on Saturday, and officials also began tallying the massive economic damage in a country where the growth forecast already was lowered drastically in August.
A police rescue helicopter missing since Thursday was found to have crashed, with no survivors, a government source said earlier.
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Press reports said the aircraft, which had been set to deliver relief goods to and evacuate people from La Pintada, was carrying a crew of three.
Pena Nieto cancelled plans to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly next week and will instead stay in the disaster area to help coordinate relief efforts over the weekend.
An estimated 200,000 people were left homeless and nearly 60,000 were evacuated because of the flooding and landslides in the wake of the storms - Manuel on the west coast and Ingrid from the east - that socked this country of 112 million.
Road repairs alone will cost about $US3 billion ($A3.2 billion), the transport ministry said.
The storms have hammered the country since September 14, damaging tens of thousands of homes, flooding cities and washing out roads.
Mexico had not been hit simultaneously by two powerful storms like this since 1958, the National Weather Service said.
Guerrero state was the hardest hit, with its Pacific resort of Acapulco cut off after the two roads to Mexico City were covered by landslides on September 15. Tourists were stranded for five days.
Thousands finally packed into cars and buses on Friday after road links reopened.
Around 62,000 tourists have managed to leave the city, about half by road and half in special airlift planes.
The airport - where the terminal flooded last Saturday - should be practically back to normal on Sunday, Communications and Transport Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told radio station Formula that the damage from the storms was "beyond calculation."
In Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest states, it will be particularly hard to tally the toll because the terrain is mountainous with many small villages that are hard to reach, he said.
Early official estimates are that the storms damaged 1.5 million homes in 22 of Mexico's 32 states, along with 72 roads or highways.
In Guerrero alone, the preliminary damage estimate is $US380 million, according to state Governor Angel Aguirre.
