CANCUN, Mexico — Utility workers restrung fallen power lines Monday, bulldozers cleared debris and traffic cops tried to keep order on jammed streets that had just reopened after Hurricane Wilma pounded Mexico's premier resort zone.
The region's economic lifeblood, the tourism industry, was devastated: One estimate placed the damage in the hotel sector at $1.5 billion.
Residents hoped that repairs would move fast enough for hotels to reopen by Christmas, the high season when the city's 25,000 rooms are usually filled. But some buildings took heavy damage, including collapsed walls and roofs, so repairs could take months.
The storm arrived Friday morning and left Sunday before dawn, inflicting damage up and down the Yucatan Peninsula's eastern coast. At least seven people were killed.
Hand crews cleared entrances in the string of luxury beachfront hotels badly damaged by the storm, while shop owners arrived at work early to take stock.
On Monday, Adriana Rodriguez started cleaning up the mess Wilma left in Zapateria Tom Sawyer, the shoe store her mother, Mercedes Maldonado, opened 28 years ago.
"We lost about 2,000 pairs of shoes," said Rodriguez, 40. "The water outside was as high as the pay phone.... Now we're going to clean up, throw out everything that was ruined and go forward."
Water 3 feet high flooded the glass display in front and mold was already growing on loafers and baby shoes well above the floodwaters. In the back storeroom, the water had swamped the lower racks of shoes that stretched the width of the shop.
Rodriguez and three employees spent the day moving out store counters and trying to squeegee the floor clean.
Despite the losses, Rodriguez still made some sales. Tourists taking refuge in nearby motels bought 15 pairs of her undamaged stock, she said. Many were tossing out the wet shoes they had been wearing since Hurricane Wilma struck.
Others had it even worse. Lucia Leah Huiton started her shop, Artesanos Lucy, in 1978. On Friday, Wilma took it away.
Huiton piled salvaged T-shirts, serapes and sombreros on a table in front of Instituto Cancun, a school where more than 1,000 tourists had been cooped up since Friday. Her son set up a table at another shelter, she said.
"I had a small shop downtown. We also sold in the hotels," she said. "With all that gone, we'll sell in the streets while the tourists are still here. Then we'll work in cleanup or rebuilding."
