Hurricane Wilma smashes into Mexico resorts

By Greg Brosnan

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico (Reuters) – Hurricane Wilma
slammed into Mexico’s famed Caribbean beach resorts on Friday
with screaming winds that flattened trees and signposts and
trapped thousands of tourists inside cramped shelters.

Wilma’s core rumbled over Cozumel island, a scuba-diving
paradise, and ferocious winds and sheet rain lashed the resort
town of Playa del Carmen.

It smashed down concrete walls and billboards, ripping
water tanks off the roofs of houses and leaving power lines
strewn across the ground. Floodwater rose to thigh-level.

“When the boards blew off our window we decided to look
outside and — Oh my God,” said Gloria Winkles, a tourist from
Texas sheltering in a small hotel in from the coast and looking
out at raging waters that half submerged a blue jeep.

“When we get tornadoes in Texas they come and go in 20
minutes. But this seems to be going on for ever,” she said.

Powerful waves swallowed up white sand beaches and flooded
low-lying areas, and gusts of over 140 mph (225 kph) bent palm
trees double as Wilma — a slow-moving and dangerously wide
Category 4 hurricane — hung over the area.

Phone lines were out to Cozumel, where a stranded hotel
worker described terrifying whistling winds.

In Cancun, a haven of luxury hotels perched on a long strip
of sand, tourists evacuated to a business hotel away from the
shore were told to stay in bathrooms, well away from windows.

“I’m going to make my bed in the bathroom. That’s where
they said I should go,” said airport worker Ruben Guzman.

HOT, LEAKING SHELTERS

Forecasters warned of catastrophic damage as the eye of the
storm moved in from the Caribbean, over the Yucatan peninsula.

“The Yucatan is really getting nailed on this,” said Max
Mayfield, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center. “It
will continue to pound that region for at least 24 hours.”

Emergency officials warned the slow-moving storm could dump
torrential rains across southern Mexico, raising the risk of
lethal mudslides and damage to coffee crops in an area already
devastated by Hurricane Stan earlier this month.

All along Mexico’s “Maya Riviera,” thousands of stranded
backpackers huddled nervously in dank, sweaty gymnasiums and
schools as the flimsy wooden beach cabins where many had been
staying took a battering.

At a gymnasium in Cancun, 1,600 people lay on mattresses
eating canned food and sweating, many stripped down to bathing
suits or underwear. Some worried whether the walls would hold
up, while an optimistic local entrepreneur sold T-shirts with
the hopeful logo: “I Survived Hurricane Wilma.”

“I wish it would get a move on. It’s frustrating,” said
British software salesman Rob Stevens. “We’ve come a long way
and now we are sitting here in a hot, damp, leaking building.”

Mexican emergency officials said more than 50,000 people
were evacuated and about 17,000 were put in schools, gymnasiums
and hotel conference rooms further inland.

The storm was expected to dump 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50
cm) of rain across the Yucatan western Cuba. Some areas could
get up to 40 inches, U.S. forecasters said.

CUBA REELING

Mudslides caused by rains from Wilma killed 10 people in
Haiti earlier this week.

Cuba was also reeling as rains drenched the west of the
island and unleashed tornadoes that destroyed tobacco-curing
sheds and homes. One person was badly injured by a sheet of
zinc ripped off a roof.

“It made a terrifying noise, like a jet plane,” said Felix
Leon, in the town of San Juan y Martinez.

Cuba evacuated 368,000 people from low-lying areas as it
braced for coastal storm surges and floods.

Wilma was expected to crash into heavily-populated southern
Florida late on Sunday. While forecasters expect it to weaken
by then, authorities in the Keys ordered tourists out and were
considering evacuating the islands’ 80,000 residents.

Wilma became the strongest Atlantic storm on record in
terms of barometric pressure on Wednesday.

At 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) its center was crossing the
northern tip of Cozumel and moving northwest at 5 mph (7 kph).

Wilma was expected to miss Gulf of Mexico oil and gas
facilities but Florida’s orange groves were at risk.

This hurricane season has spawned three of the most-intense
storms on record. Experts say the Atlantic has entered a period
of heightened storm activity that could last 20 more years.

(Additional reporting by Noel Randewich in Cancun, Anthony
Boadle in Cuba, Lorraine Orlandi in Mexico City and Jane Sutton
in Miami)