• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Hurricane Emily grows, threatens US-Mexico border

Posted on: Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 19:11 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

More News in this Category