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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.
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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