Thousands flee as Hurricane Dean approaches Mexico
Travelers by the thousands flew out of the Mexican resort Cancun ahead of menacing Hurricane Dean today.
Workers boarded up the windows of luxury hotels on a tourist strip still being rebuilt after the blow from another storm two years earlier.
Dean was already a powerful Category 4 storm as it raked the Cayman Islands to the east today.
The US National Hurricane Centre said it could grow into a monstrous Category 5 hurricane before slamming Mexico’s Caribbean coast, probably early tomorrow.
That would make it even stronger than Hurricane Wilma, which ravaged Cancun in 2005, but Dean appeared to be heading toward an area around one of the newer resorts, Majahual, about 150 miles, south of Cancun.
Officials today said they were evacuating that area and they arranged for extra flights to help tens of thousands of tourists leave Cancun before Dean’s arrival.
The hotel zone was eerily quiet today, as nearly all guests had gone.
