Rescue workers were struggling to free hundreds of thousands of residents trapped in the oil-rich Mexican state of Tabasco today, after the worst flooding ever recorded in the area.

Over one million people – more than half of the state’s population - have been directly affected by the floods, said State Governor Andres Granier, comparing the disaster to the devastation wreaked on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina two years ago.

As rain continued to swell rivers and lash already deluged towns and rural areas, officials warned it would not relent in the coming days, with claims that the state is currently between 70 and 80 per cent underwater.

“New Orleans was small compared to this,” said Mr Granier late Thursday. “Of the 2.1 million Tabasquenos, more than half are suffering from this serious problem that has not been experienced in the history of Tabasco.”

The flooding has failed to cause loss of life of the scale suffered by New Orleans. Whereas 1,000 people died as a result of Katrina in the city of New Orleans alone, so far just one person has been killed in Mexico.

However, 300,000 remain trapped in their homes in locations across the state, approximately the size of Belgium. Army and navy helicopters and rescue boats have been sent in to aid those stranded, but the unremitting rain is impeding efforts.

President Felipe Calderon urged Mexicans to donate aid to flood victims during an address to the nation late yesterday.

“The situation is extraordinarily grave,” he said, describing the flooding as “one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country."

Many Tabasquenos “have lost their homes, their belongings, their crops, and the means to maintain their children,” Calderon said.

“Others remain in their homes but with no access to food, water or medicine."

With more than 850 towns entirely flooded, some 400 doctors and health workers have been dispatched to monitor any outbreak of infections, according to Tabasco’s Civil Protection agency.

Torrential rains began to pound Tabasco last week when the sandbag defences hastily constructed by the military and state authorities were easily overcome by the rising waters, causing the Grijalva, Carrizal and Puxcatan rivers to burst their banks.

The floods worsened further this week as authorities in the neighbouring state of Chiapas – where 2,500 people have been evacuated from their homes - drained water from two dams to prevent them exceeding their capacity. The state capital of Villahermosa was flooded on Wednesday by the overflowing Grijalva river, sinking the city of 750,000 people into a state of lawlessness.

Despite ever-rising water levels, hundreds of Villahermosa residents have refused to abandon their flooded homes to the looters who are ransacking the city.

“There’s no policing,” a Villahermosa woman told reporters. “The thieves climb on the roofs and open the doors through there."

All of the area's crops have been destroyed, according to officials, including the tabasco peppers for which the state is famous. Though producers of tabasco sauce such as the trademarked McIlhenny Tabasco now use peppers cultivated across Central America, Tabasco residents and restaurants rely on locally grown produce to spice up their cuisine.

Of equal if not greater damage to the economy is the damage to the state’s oil industry, which has been thrown into chaos by the floods and associated storms.

Stormy seas closed the three main oil ports on the Gulf of Mexico coast on Sunday, halting almost all exports and a fifth of production, though two of the ports were reopened on Wednesday. Last week, twenty-one people were killed when storms caused an oil platform to collide with another rig in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing dozens of workers to leap into the water.

The flooding also caused the explosion of a natural gas pipeline operated by state-owned company Petroleos Mexicanos, though fortunately no injuries were reported.

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