Hurricane Dean Aims for Mexico's Yucatan
Pastor Dale Morgan
*
Aug 20, 11:08 AM EDT
*Hurricane Dean Aims for Mexico's Yucatan*
By STEVENSON JACOBS
Associated Press Writer
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands (AP) -- Hurricane Dean spared the Cayman
Islands the worst of its fury on Monday as it headed for a collision
course with Mexico's resort-dotted Caribbean coast, sending tourists
fleeing for the airports and locals searching for higher ground.
Dean was already a powerful Category 4 storm as it raked the Cayman
Islands. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it could grow into a
monstrous Category 5 hurricane before slashing across the Yucatan
Peninsula and emerging in the oil-rich Gulf of Campeche.
While the storm's center was expected to strike central Mexico, the
outer bands of the storm were likely to bring rain and gusty winds to
south Texas - already saturated after an unusually rainy summer. Texas
officials were taking no changes - emergency operations centers opened,
prison inmates were moved inland, and sandbags distributed.
The Mexican resort city of Cancun began evacuations and arranged for
extra flights to help tens of thousands of tourists leave before Dean's
arrival. The hotel zone was quiet on Monday, nearly all guests gone.
Florida Volynskaya, 24, of Baltimore, Md., arrived at Cancun's airport
Sunday planning to spend the night on the floor in hopes of getting a
flight out.
"We just wanted to get out anywhere," said Volynskaya. "We really didn't
want to be in a shelter."
Though forecasts had shifted the projected track to the south, Cancun
still could face tropical-storm-force winds - forecast to extend over an
area of about 75,000 square miles, about the size of South Dakota - and
local fishermen were taking precautions.
"We're leaving. You don't play around with nature," said Maclovio Manuel
Kanul as he pulled equipment out of his beachfront fishing shack near
Cancun.
"We still haven't been able to recover from Wilma, and now this is coming."
Hurricane Wilma ravaged Cancun in 2005, filling hotel lobbies with
shattered metal, marble, glass and muck, and reducing beaches to thin
strips. The storm caused $3 billion in damage, the largest insured
losses in Mexican history.
Dean - the first hurricane of the Atlantic season - bore down late
Sunday on the Cayman Islands after battering Jamaica, but the vulnerable
British territory said Monday it had been "spared the brunt of Hurricane
Dean."
In one Cayman shelter - the gymnasium of John Gray High School - about
100 people gathered around radios Sunday night, listening to the latest
news about the hurricane.
"Whichever God you believe in, now is the time to bow your head and pray
to him," said Zemrie Thompson, the shelter coordinator. Those in the gym
bowed their heads.
The storm has killed at least eight people as it has moved across the
Caribbean.
Dean's eye passed some 100 miles south of the Caymans, and the islands
were spared hurricane-force winds, which extended outward up to 60 miles
from the center.
Early Monday, Dean had maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, up from 145
mph Sunday, and could dump up to 20 inches of rain. Even if the
hurricane continues a steady westward course toward Mexico, parts of
Texas could be flooded by the storm's outer bands.
"Our mission is very simple. It's to get people out of the kill zone, to
get people out of the danger area, which is the coastline of Texas,"
said Johnny Cavazos, chief emergency director of Cameron County, at
Texas' southern tip.
Jamaica avoided the direct hit when the storm wound up passing to the
south Sunday night. There were no deaths reported in Jamaica, but the
storm uprooted trees, flooded roads and tore the roofs off many homes,
businesses and a prison block. No prisoners escaped.
Police said officers got into a shootout with looters at a shopping
center in the central Jamaican parish of Clarendon, but nobody was hurt.
Curfews were in effect until Monday evening. Authorities also cut power
on the island to prevent damage to the power grid.
The government set up more than 1,000 shelters in converted schools,
churches and the indoor national sports arena, but only 47 were occupied
as the storm moved in, said Cecil Bailey of the Office of Disaster
Preparedness and Emergency Management.
As of 11 a.m. EDT Monday, Dean was centered about 125 miles southwest of
Grand Cayman.
George Lee, mayor of the Portmore community near the Jamaican capital
Kingston, said appeals to evacuate went unheeded. Some islanders said
they were afraid for their belongings if they moved to shelters.
"Too much crime in Kingston. I'm not leaving my home," Paul Lyn said in
Port Royal, east of Kingston.
Many tourists who did not get flights out took shelter at places like
Sandals Whitehouse, a resort that has buildings capable of withstanding
a powerful storm.
Trinice Tyler, a postal worker from Lake Elsinore, Calif., said she
would weather the storm there "on my knees praying."
"I'm celebrating my 40th birthday today, and it's going to be a birthday
to remember," she said.
The National Hurricane Center said the first hurricane of the Atlantic
season was projected to have sustained winds of 160 mph before plowing
into Mexico's Yucatan peninsula on Tuesday. The Mexican mainland or
Texas could be hit later.
There was also a hurricane warning in effect for Belize's coast.
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Associated Press writers Howard Campbell in Kingston, Jamaica; Mark
Stevenson in Cancun, Mexico; Michael Melia in San Juan, Puerto Rico;
Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Lisa Orkin Emmanuel in Miami; and
Carley Petesch in New York contributed to this report.