Tourists flee as hurricane pounds Mexican resort
Howling wind and rain from Hurricane Emily lashed beaches in the Mexican resort of Cancun today, after thousands of tourists, many of them Britons, were evacuated from their hotels to improvised shelters at schools and gymnasiums.
Packing 145mph winds, Emily sideswiped Jamaica, where four people were swept away in a car, before taking aim at Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, where it whipped sand from the beaches, downed signs and toppled trees.
As it approached the Yucatan, the storm toppled billboards and knocked out power in Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun, and left Isla Mujeres and parts of the island of Cozumel and Cancun without electricity. Mexican authorities predicted the hurricane’s eye could pass almost directly over Cozumel later today.
Mexico’s state-owned oil company announced yesterday that two pilots were killed in the Gulf of Mexico when their helicopter was downed by strong winds as they tried to land on an offshore oil rig to evacuate workers.
The craft, operated by a contract company, was part of a fleet of 15 ships and 26 helicopters working to transfer 15,500 oil workers to shore before Emily hit the Yucatan peninsula and crossed into the Gulf.
The platform evacuations closed 63 wells and halted the production of 480,000 barrels of oil per day. After crossing into the Gulf, Emily is likely to make landfall again some time on Wednesday, anywhere from north-eastern Mexico to southern Texas.
In Cancun, hundreds of buses moved more than 25,000 tourists to temporary shelters, part of the 57,600 tourists being evacuated statewide from resorts like Tulum, Playa de Carmen and Cozumel. Cancun’s airport closed yesterday afternoon after thousands lined up at ticket counters, trying to get flights out before the storm hit.
“We’re not going to sleep tonight,” Cancun mayor Francisco Alor said.
By late afternoon, heavy winds tugged at palm trees and sent the last people at the beach running for their cars.
Christopher Espinoza, a 23 Cancun resident, braved bursts of wind to look out over the angry waves pounding the Cancun seafront. “The waves are already starting to take away part of the beach,” he said.
Beach erosion has long been a problem for Cancun and waves were starting to lap almost at the doorsteps of some hotels.
Last night Emily was 50 miles south east of Cozumel, Mexico, approaching the Yucatan peninsula at about 20mph. Maximum sustained winds were near 135mph and forecasters were predicting the storm could dump up to 12 inches of rain and cause storm surge flooding up to 12 feet above normal tide levels.
Hundreds of tourists, many clutching pillows, streamed out of Cancun hotels at dawn yesterday, boarding buses bound for safer ground.
Tourism and hotel officials had said tourists would be relocated to ballrooms and convention centres in larger, well-protected hotels. But the first wave of evacuees was ferried to gymnasiums and government schools.
Hundreds of mostly foreign tourists lay shoulder-to-shoulder on thin foam pads in a sweltering gymnasium near the centre of Cancun. They were given free bottled water and sandwiches, but many gasped when a hard rain rattled the metal roof of the building.
“It’s hot in here,” said Beth McGhee, 46, a tourist from Independence, Missouri. “We feel like we’ve been kept in the dark until this morning. But we’re safe, and that’s what’s important.”
In Jamaica, searchers found the four bodies trapped inside a car, which was filled with mud and other debris. A man, a woman, a baby boy and his five-year-old sister had been driving through a flooded rural road in south-west Jamaica when a surge of water pushed them over a cliff, police said.
The Cayman Islands escaped major damage. The islands and a handful of other Caribbean countries were devastated last year when three catastrophic hurricanes - Frances, Ivan and Jeanne – tore through the region with a collective ferocity not seen in years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions worth of damage.
