Hurricane Dean pounds Mexico's Yucatan peninsula
TULUM, MEXICO — Hurricane Dean barreled into the Yucatan peninsula early today as the most intense storm in more than two decades, striking fishing villages and isolated seaside resorts and causing flooding across a wide swath of two Mexican states.
The eye of the storm passed north of Chetumal, but Mexican authorities said they feared serious flooding in the low-lying city. By dawn, Hurricane Dean was over the central Yucatan peninsula and had weakened to a Category 3 storm, with 125-mph winds. The storm had reached landfall as a Category 5 hurricane with 160-mph winds.
Authorities in Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras also feared flooding and landslides.
Satellite imagery showed the storm made landfall about 3 a.m. at the Xcalan nature reserve near Majahual, a onetime fishing village of 300 people that in recent years has become a popular stop for cruise lines.
Flooding was reported in towns throughout Quintana Roo state and in neighboring Yucatan state.
The outer bands of the storm, packing 160-mph winds near its eye, began lashing the coasts of Yucatan and Belize early today. The largest city threatened was Chetumal, home to 137,000 people about 50 miles southwest of the eye's path. It is the capital of Quintana Roo state, which includes Cancun, Cozumel and other resorts.
"We are begging people to leave their homes and go to one of our shelters," Cora Amalia Castilla, the mayor of Chetumal, said in a telephone interview. "All we are asking is that this hurricane take pity on us."
Category 5 is the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale used to measure hurricanes, an intensity not seen in the Atlantic since 2005, the year Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Officials at the southern tip of Texas urged people to leave Monday, though Dean was supposed to pass far to the south.
On the beaches east of Tulum, hundreds of tourists fled bungalows facing white sands, a turquoise sea and winds that grew more powerful with each passing hour.
Many headed inland for the relative safety of this town, where 3,000 residents and tourists were expected to seek shelter at emergency centers set up at schools, hotels and other buildings.
Chris Davis, 32, of Toronto spent the final afternoon before the hurricane's arrival taking advantage of the strong winds, parasurfing on a stretch of beach where dozens of cabanas were boarded up and empty.
