Resort battered by Hurricane Wilma
Mexico’s popular Cancun resort area has taken a battering from Hurricane Wilma as tourists huddled in hotels and shelters amid howling winds and shattering glass.
The eye of the category 3 storm, which had already killed 13 people, first slammed into Cozumel Island – the worst-hit, and now cut off – and then headed north-northwest to the beach town of Playa de Carmen, south of Cancun.
The winds caused severe damage in Playa de Carmen, flattening dozens of houses, and sending everything – from rooftop water tanks to boards used as window coverings – flying through the air.
The slowness of the storm has worsened the effect on the resort-studded coast, where it has lingered since yesterday.
“This is the equivalent of having four or five hurricanes of this size pass over one after the other, given the amount of time we have been suffering hurricane-force winds,” said Quintana Roo Governor Felix Gonzalez Cantu, whose state includes Cancun. “Never in the history of Quintana Roo have we has storm like this.”
With “relentless” 120 mph winds, the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida, said the storm was “really clobbering” the areas around Cozumel and Cancun, where it blew down trees that crushed some cars.
Officials don’t expect to be able to reach Cozumel – whose ferry service is out of commission – until later today, at the earliest, to assess the damage.
The slow-moving hurricane is expected to pound the area all day today as it passes over the tip of the Yucatan peninsula; it is then expected to emerge into the Gulf of Mexico, curl around Cuba and head towards Florida.
The Hurricane Centre said “a hurricane watch will likely be required for portions of central and southern Florida and the Florida keys later today.”
“It’s going to be a long couple of days here for the Yucatan Peninsula,” said Max Mayfield, director of the Hurricane Centre.
People at some shelters slept under plastic sheeting. Power was cut to most of the region before the storm as a precaution.
As the eye of the storm approached Cancun, officials loaded hundreds of evacuees into buses and vans and moved them to other shelters.
Hotels being used as shelters pushed furniture up against windows, but the force of the wind blasted through such barriers. Water poured into rooms and hallways through broken windows.
Reached by telephone, Julio Torres at the Red Cross office in Cozumel said: “tin roofing is flying through the air everywhere. Palm trees are falling down. Signs are in the air, and cables are snapping.
“Not even emergency vehicles have been able to go out on the streets because the winds are too strong.”
No deaths were immediately reported in Mexico.
Early on Wednesday, Wilma briefly became the most intense hurricane recorded in the Atlantic with 882 millibars of pressure, breaking the record low of 888 set by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Lower pressure brings faster winds.
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