Tourist resorts spared as Hurricane Dean’s deadly power fades
HURRICANE Dean slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico yesterday as a roaring Category 5 hurricane, the most intense Atlantic storm to make landfall in two decades.
The storm - the third most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall since record-keeping began in the 1850s - lashed Mayan ruins and was heading for the oil installations of the Yucatan peninsula.
It had killed 13 people on its way across the Caribbean, but it hit a sparsely populated stretch of the Mexican coast and skirted the resorts where 50,000 holidaymakers had been evacuated.
It weakened within hours to a Category 2 storm, with winds that had gusted up to 200mph dropping to 105mph.
Dean struck land near the cruise port of Majahual and then raced towards the Bay of Campeche, where the state oil company evacuated the offshore rigs that produce most of Mexico’s oil and gas.
The storm dumped huge amounts of rain on the low-lying peninsula, where thousands of Mayan Indians live in wooden huts in isolated communities. With the storm still raging, there were no reports of deaths, injuries or serious damage.
Felix Gonzalez, governor of Quintana Roo, said 250 small communities had been evacuated, but local media reported that others, carrying machetes, turned away soldiers and refused to leave. Driving rain, poor communications and impassable roads made it impossible to determine how they fared.
The eye of the storm passed over the state capital, Chetumal, where residents were ordered to stay inside after a harrowing night with windows shattering and water tanks flying off rooftops. Sirens wailed as the storm battered the city, hurling down billboards. All electricity was cut off.
Across the border in Belize, trees fell and debris flew through the air. The government evacuated Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye - both popular with tourists - and ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew from Belize City north to the Mexican border.
In the largely Mayan town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, about 30 miles north of the eye’s westward path, people stared from their porches at tree branches and electrical cables crisscrossing streets flooded ankle-deep.
“We began to feel the strong winds at about two in the morning, and you could hear trees were breaking and some tin roofs were coming off,” said shop worker Miguel Colli, 36. “Everyone holed up in their houses. Thank God the worst is over.”
