Hurricane Wilma flooded Mexico's Caribbean beach resorts, smashed homes and killed at least two people yesterday in a slow-moving rampage across the Yucatan peninsula.
Howling 185 km/h winds caused buildings to collapse, uprooted trees and confined thousands of worried tourists to cramped, sweltering shelters for a third day. Two people died at the resort town of Playa del Carmen, which is popular with Europeans, when a gas tank exploded, the state governor said.
Florida was next in line for a battering. Authorities there were taking no risks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and yesterday ordered mandatory evacuations, starting with 80,000 residents of the vulnerable Florida Keys.
The longer Wilma stays over Yucatan, the weaker it will be when it heads across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.
It has already lost some strength, and was downgraded to a Category 3 on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale, but is still strong enough to cause massive damage and take more lives.
Resort island Cozumel, popular with scuba divers, took the brunt of the storm on Friday and most communications were cut. At least five flimsy homes in Playa del Carmen were knocked down and much of the town flooded with knee-high sea-water. In one shelter converted from a kindergarten, 40 migrant workers huddled in a small, damp room. They had only eaten half a can of tuna each in the last 24 hours.
"We need water, food and clothes," pleaded Carlos Vaca, a construction worker from the state of Tabasco.
"I have lived through three hurricanes and this is the worst," said Alberto Pat, head of Playa del Carmen's tourist police force, which was patrolling to prevent looting.
The front of one store in the town was ripped off, a bus station roof had collapsed, and cars lay crushed by fallen trees. At a nearby jail, five prisoners escaped into the jungle after a fence blew down.
The Yucatan peninsula, famous for its turquoise seas, white sand and Mayan ruins, has been lashed by Wilma since Thursday. It hovered over Cancun yesterday, drifting slowly northward, and seemed certain to continue into last night.
Wilma dumped 59 cm of rain on Friday on Isla Mujeres off Cancun, an unprecedented downpour for Mexico.
"We are talking about a record hurricane as far as rain is concerned," meteorologist Alberto Hernandez said. He said Wilma was unusually big with a diameter of 800 km.
Thousands of stranded tourists huddled nervously in dank, sweaty gymnasiums, hotels and schools as the luxury hotels and wooden beach cabins where many had stayed took a beating.
In one Playa del Carmen hotel doubling as a shelter where there has been no electricity or running water for two days, Scott Whitcher stood on his balcony and bathed in the rain.
"We are very fortunate to be in here. We were in a palm hut. I bet there is nothing left. I cannot wait for this to be over," the 38-year-old San Francisco resident said.
In one Cancun hotel where the windows were smashed by the wind, tourists nailed up tables to keep out the rain. Mudslides caused by Wilma killed 10 people in Haiti earlier last week and Cuba was reeling as the storm drenched the west of the island and unleashed tornadoes. Cuba evacuated 368,000 people as it braced for coastal storm surges and floods.
Wilma was expected to head off into the Gulf of Mexico once it finishes pounding Yucatan and could hit heavily populated southern Florida by tomorrow morning.
Forecasters expect it to weaken by then, but authorities in the Florida Keys ordered residents out from noon yesterday. Tourists have already been evacuated. 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.