MIAMI – Now, it’s Mexico’s turn to confront this extraordinary hurricane season.
Hurricane Emily crashed its destructive winds into the popular tourist centers of Cancun and Cozumel on the Yucatan Peninsula late Sunday, the first of two encounters Mexico is likely to have with the same compact, swift and extremely dangerous storm.
For Melissa Holt of Margate, Fla., and countless other tourists, this just wasn’t the plan at all.
Partly to get away from hurricanes, Holt and two friends arrived in Cancun on Thursday. Emily’s outer bands arrived there at nightfall Sunday. Its small, powerful core was expected to drill the coast, much of it highly developed, with 145-mph winds overnight.
“It’s truly mayhem here,” Holt, 26, said by telephone from her hotel room Sunday evening. “There’s no food on the shelves. People are just running around. Everyone is going into save yourself mode.”
Earlier this weekend, with peak winds of 155-mph, Emily became the strongest storm to form in the Atlantic basin this early since record-keeping began in 1851. In addition, with five named storms already, the season is off to the busiest start in recorded history.
Emily might pose the most serious threat so far.
Its winds were capable of enormous destruction and they targeted one of the world’s major resort centers. Cozumel is an island; Cancun is a narrow spit of land so covered by shoulder-to-shoulder hotels and upscale shops that it resembles a cross between Miami Beach and Las Vegas.
As many as 80,000 tourists fled the region in airplanes, buses and private vehicles, but not all of them could get away. Hundreds of buses carried thousands of tourists to temporary shelters in Cancun. Others, like Holt, sought refuge in their hotels.
She said she and her friends, Lisa Paider and Mike Ablack, both of Tamarac, Fla., could not find seats on a flight home and were not given any other choice by local officials or the managers of their hotel, the Moon Palace Resort on the southern edge of Cancun.
“We are supposed to ride it out in our rooms,” said Holt, who is director of the student wellness center on Florida Atlantic University’s campus in Davie.
In fact, she said, her hotel’s convention center was pressed into service as an emergency shelter for guests of other hotels.
The Moon Palace distributed notices Sunday advising guests that a curfew would begin at 5 p.m., alcohol sales were banned, and room service was terminated.
“We suggest you stay calm and strictly follow instructions from the hotel staff … ,” the advisory said. “Stay in your room. Keep your shades and curtains closed. Do not use the Jacuzzi. Stay away from windows and doors. Keep your documents and valuables safe.”
Emily already killed at least one person in Grenada and damaged hundreds of homes on that island, still struggling to recover from last year’s Hurricane Ivan. Emily’s rain also swept Jamaica, killing four people there, and the Cayman islands.
Two people reportedly died in a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico as thousands were evacuated from oil-drilling platforms.
After leaving the Yucatan, Emily is expected to regain any strength it loses over land and strike Mexico again Tuesday night near La Pesca on the Gulf Coast.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
But first, it must have its way with the Yucatan and the tourists trapped there.
Holt said she and her friends “went into storm mode” Sunday morning.
They harvested water and whatever food they could find, enough for maybe 12 hours. They collected other storm supplies, including a flashlight Holt’s boyfriend urged her to pack before she left South Florida.
This is what she said as the storm raced closer and the wind gathered and the water turned dark and choppy:
“We were kind of joking that we’re on “Survivor.’
“We just did what we’re supposed to do, and we’re trying to educate other tourists. So many came from other, nonhurricane locations. People from Philadelphia, from California.
“There are rumors. Someone said, “Oh, it will be just like a thunderstorm.’ I said, “No, no, that’s not what a Category 4 is like at all.’
“I feel like all of those hurricanes we went through in Florida prepared me for this. But I don’t have my family with me, which is tough. I’m far from home in a foreign country.
“If we didn’t know how to prepare for something like this, we’d be in a tough situation right now.”
—
(c) 2005, The Miami Herald.
Visit The Miami Herald Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.herald.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-07-17-05 2018EDT
Comments are no longer available on this story