Mexico's Cancun evacuates as Wilma grows, nears (AP) Updated: 2005-10-21 08:51
Desperate tourists jockeyed for flights out of Cancun, Mexcio, on
Thursday as officials hauled thousands of visitors from luxury hotels to
emergency shelters ahead of Hurricane Wilma, which forecasters said was growing
stronger. Cuba evacuated more than 200,000 people.
The hurricane, which killed at least 13 people in the Caribbean, was expected
to hit Cancun and sideswipe Cuba early Friday. Forecasters said it would then
swing around to the northeast and charge Sunday at hurricane-weary Florida,
where Gov. Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency.
Briefly the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, Wilma remained a
dangerous Category 4 hurricane and was gaining strength. Its 240 150 mph winds
made it more powerful than Hurricane Katrina at the time it plowed into the U.S.
Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, killing more than 1,200 people.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm's wobbly center was
roughly 135 miles southeast of Cozumel, a popular vacation island where the
storm was likely to hit first before heading to Cancun. While many were
evacuated from the island, a few had stayed.
A tourist photographs a 'I survived hurricane
Wilma' t-shirt on sale at a storm shelter in Cancun on the Yucatan
peninsula as hurricane Wilma approaches October 20,
2005.[Reuters] | "This is getting very powerful,
very threatening," Mexican President Vicente Fox said. Hundreds of schools in
the Yucatan peninsula were ordered closed Thursday and Friday, and many were
turned into shelters.
The Cancun airport was packed Thursday. Lines of hundreds waiting for flights
wound past queues of dozens seeking rental cars, taxis or automatic teller
machines.
Some airlines had already started canceling flights by midday.
A canceled U.S. Airways flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was sending Matt
Williams and his friend Jeff Davidson, both of Westfield, N.J., back to their
hotel in Playa del Carmen south of Cancun. There, they faced a night in a
ballroom-turned-emergency-shelter.
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