Hurricane, Cat-5 Beaner Basher, Slams Mexico, Belize

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/8/20/235533.shtml?s=br

Dean Gains as Winds Slam Mexico, Belize

NewsMax.com Wires Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007

TULUM, Mexico -- Hurricane Dean strengthened into a monstrous Category 5

storm Monday night as its outter bands of wind and rain slammed the coasts

of Mexico and Belize. Thousands of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan

Riviera as it roared toward the ancient ruins and modern oil installations

of the Yucatan Peninsula.

Mexico's state oil company, Petroleos de Mexico, said it was evacuating all

of its more than 18,000 offshore workers in the southern Gulf of Mexico,

which includes the giant Cantarell oil field. Dozens of historically

significant Mayan sites also were emptied.

Dean - which has killed at least 12 people across the Caribbean - quickly

picked up strength after brushing Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

By 11 p.m. EDT, Dean had sustained winds of 160 mph and was centered about

150 miles east of Chetumal, where it was projected to make landfall early

Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Chetumal is about 120 miles south of Tulum.

Category 5 storms - capable of catastrophic damage - are extremely rare -

only three have hit the U.S. since record-keeping began.

Cancun seemed likely to be spared a direct hit, but visitors abandoned its

swank hotels to swarm outbound flights. Officials evacuated more rustic

lodgings farther south.

Eric Morovich of Orange County, Calif., waited outside Cancun's airport

after trying unsuccessfully to book a ferry, rent a boat and charter an

airplane. "The next option is swimming, I guess," he joked.

A hurricane warning was in affect from Cancun all the way south through

Belize. All hospitals were closed in Belize City, the country's biggest, and

authorities urged residents to leave, saying Dean is too strong for their

shelters. Meteorologists said a storm surge of 12 to 18 feet was possible at

the storm's center.

The storm was expected to slash across the Yucatan and emerge in the Gulf of

Campeche, where Petroleos de Mexico decided Monday to shut down production

on the offshore rigs that extract most of the nation's oil.

President Felipe Calderon said he would cut short a trip to Canada where he

is meeting with President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"Given (the hurricane's) progression and dangerousness, I have decided to

return to Mexico soon," Calderon said in Ottawa. "I'll personally oversee

the aid effort in case of a disaster."

Shutting the 407 oil wells in the Campeche Sound will result in a production

loss of 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas

a day, Pemex said. Of that, about 1.7 million barrels of oil a day is

exported from three Gulf ports, where Pemex was loading the final tankers

before shutting them as well.

Central Mexico was next on the storm's path, though the outer bands were

likely to bring rain, flooding and gusty winds to south Texas, already

saturated after an unusually rainy summer.

At the southern tip of Texas, officials urged residents to evacuate ahead of

the storm. "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, Cameron County's chief emergency director.

Officials in the resort town of South Padre Island distributed sandbags

after a state of emergency was declared.

In Mexico, the Quintana Roo state government said about two-thirds of the

60,000 tourists in the Cancun area had left. Some camped overnight at the

city's airport to ensure a flight out. Many others were turned away.

"I'm just hoping that we get out in time. We've got two little kids back in

the States," Morovich said. But the heavyset man wasn't too worried about

survival, saying: "It would take at least a Category 5 to blow me away."

Workers hammered plywood over the windows of hotels along the tourist strip,

where the skyline is still marked with cranes used to repair the damage of

Hurricane Wilma. That storm caused $3 billion in losses in 2005.

Dean could be even stronger than Wilma, which stalled over Cancun and

pummeled it for a day. The fast-moving Dean was passing farther south, and

was likely to deliver a brief but powerful punch to Mexico's Maya heartland.

That area stretches from Tulum south to the growing beach resort at

Mahahual, where authorities evacuated hundreds of tourists on Monday.

Between the two lies the 2.5 million-acre Sian Kaan nature reserve, with a

1,200-year-old network of Mayan canals.

Government anthropologists said they were preparing 13 archaeological sites

for the storm, pruning trees and removing signs and vegetation that strong

winds could turn into damaging projectiles.

Cancun still could face tropical-storm-force winds - forecast to extend over

an area of about 75,000 square miles, about the size of Nebraska or South

Dakota.

"We're leaving. You don't play around with nature," fisherman Maclovio

Manuel Kanul said, pulling equipment from his beachfront fishing shack near

Cancun. "We still haven't been able to recover from Wilma, and now this is

coming."

Belize, just south of Mexico, evacuated 6,000 people from the country's main

tourist resort, San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, and 500 or so from nearby Caye

Caulker, said national emergency coordinator James Jan Mohammed. People were

urged to leave low-lying areas.

Authorities evacuated Belize City's three hospitals and were moving

high-risk patients to the inland capital, Belmopan, founded after 1961's

Hurricane Hattie devastated Belize City. Belize City Mayor Zenaida Moya

urged people to leave, saying shelters aren't strong enough to withstand a

storm of Dean's size.

Dean, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, raked Jamaica and the

Cayman Islands on Sunday, but both escaped the full brunt of the storm.

In Jamaica, the storm uprooted trees, flooded roads and collapsed some

buildings. Downed utility poles left thousands without electricity or

telephone service. Police said two men were killed: one when his house

collapsed and another struck by flying debris.

Haitian officials on Monday reported two more deaths from the storm, raising

the storm's death toll in the Caribbean to at least 12.

The worst storm to hit Latin America in modern times was 1998's Hurricane

Mitch, which killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing,

most in Honduras and Nicaragua.