Hurricane Emily grows, threatens US-Mexico border

By Alejandro Juarez

MATAMOROS, Mexico (Reuters) – Thousands fled the coasts of
Mexico and Texas on Tuesday as approaching Hurricane Emily
lashed the border region with strong winds and rains after
killing at least five people in the Caribbean.

Emily packed winds of 125 mph (200 kph) and strengthened to
a Category 3 hurricane, capable of destroying mobile homes and
blowing over large trees, as it churned toward northeastern
Mexico, where it was expected to make landfall overnight.

“It is passing over warm waters and that increases the
chances of it strengthening,” said Carmen Segura, the head of
Mexico’s civil protection agency.

Downpours and whirling winds hit the border city of
Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, foreshadowing the
arrival of worse weather.

Some 17,000 people in the fishing villages of Mexico’s
Tamaulipas state were evacuated to temporary shelters.
Fishermen feared a bleak future if their tin and wooden homes
were blown away.

“We have nowhere to go,” said Erasto Gomez in the Gulf
coastal town of Playa Bagdad.

Residents of coastal lowlands in the far south of Texas
laid sandbags at their homes and nailed plywood over their
windows, some with written messages telling Emily to “Go Away!”

On South Padre Island, a popular vacation spot off the tip
of Texas, police ordered tourists at a trailer park to leave.

“I was trying to stretch out my vacation as long as I
could,” said a camper identified only as Alex, the last person
to go. “I’m having a good time here at South Padre Island, but
we’ve gotta run.”

Meteorologists said the storm could cause tornadoes as far
north as Austin, Texas.

“We will be concerned with the possibility of isolated
tornadoes, they will be tropical, they will be short-lived,
they will be hard to find, but they will be out there,” said
Larry Eblen, of the National Weather Service office in San
Antonio.

Cameron County declared a state of emergency and Texas Gov.
Rick Perry ordered over 225 National Guard members and nine
National Guard aircraft on standby.

OIL EXPORTS CUT

At 7 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the storm’s center was 135 miles
southeast of Brownsville, Texas, and moving west-northwest at
about 12 mph (19 kph).

Emily’s center is expected to hit land some 150 miles south
of the border, where it would strike low-lying Mexican fishing
communities overnight.

Emily killed five people in Jamaica in its swing through
the Caribbean as a Category 4 hurricane, and several people
died in Mexico in incidents indirectly caused by the storm.

A strike would be Emily’s second bite at Mexico, after
slamming into the Yucatan Peninsula early on Monday, sending
tens of thousands of tourists and local residents to shelters
in Caribbean beach resorts like Cancun, Cozumel and Playa del
Carmen.

The storm smashed hotels and homes, toppled trees and
knocked out power along the coast but the damage was less than
many had feared.

Mexican oil exports remained suspended on Tuesday and were
set to restart on Wednesday after operations in the southern
Gulf of Mexico were halted due to Hurricane Emily, a source at
Mexican oil monopoly Pemex said.

But U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas producers were
breathing a sigh of relief that Emily would likely leave them
alone.

“By the time it went through we were on the fringe of the
storm,” said Tony Lentini, spokesman for Apache Corp., which
shut off only some natural gas and oil output.

(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and Miguel Angel
Gutierrez in Mexico City and Jim Forsyth and Erwin Seba in
Texas)