Saturday Night in the Riviera Maya

W I L M A!    W I L M A!   She's Moving On

7pm local time, Hurricane Wilma punished our lovely Riviera Maya coastline for a second day Saturday, ripping away storefronts, peeling back roofs and forcing tourists and residents trapped in hotels and shelters to scramble to higher floors. At least two people were killed. 

Wilma, which had weakened to a Category 2 as it inched northward with sustained winds of 100 mph, was expected to pick up speed Sunday, sideswiping Cuba before it slams into Florida. Late Saturday, it was slowly moving back over the Caribbean Sea, and rains and winds were beginning to lessen in Playa del Carmen at nightfall. 

As Wilma's eye passed over Playa del Carmen on Saturday, the air became calm and eerily electric. Some residents ventured briefly from their hiding spots to survey the flooded, debris-filled streets.

An outing during the eye's calm revealed a downtown Playa del Carmen littered with glass, tree trunks and cars up to their roofs in water.

State and federal officials said they had little information on damage because Wilma's winds made reconnaissance almost impossible. 

Two people died from injuries they sustained Friday when a gas tank exploded during the storm, Quintana Roo state officials said. 

Quintana Roo State Civil Protection Director Maj. Jose Nemecio said a few emergency crews were able to begin distributing emergency supplies in Playa del Carmen on Saturday. But there were few reports on the overall extent of the damage. 

"We really know nothing. There are no telephones, no cell phones," he said. "We have no news from Cancun, Playa del Carmen or Cozumel. I think this is going to be a catastrophic situation."

Added Quintana Roo Gov. Felix Gonzalez Cantu: "Never in the history of Quintana Roo have we had a storm like this." 

On the island of Cozumel appears to be the hardest hit but we simply cannot tell at this point.

In Playa del Carmen, screaming winds flattened wood-and-tarpaper houses and sent water tanks and plywood sheets flying.

In Cancun, the storm's angry winds ripped roofing off luxury hotels and knocked out windows, filling rooms and shelters with water and forcing some evacuees to seek higher ground. Others slept with plastic sheeting as bedding. 

The wind ripped part of the ceiling off a gymnasium-turned-shelter, forcing the evacuation of more than 1,000 people. Stacy Presley, a 22-year-old honeymooner from Milwaukee, was among them.  

She and 120 others were moved to a kindergarten where evacuees were forced to use plastic water bottles instead of bathrooms and sleep on miniature desks nearly submerged in rising flood waters. There was also no food.   

On Saturday, she and her husband fled when the winds died down. "There were people getting sick from the urine on the floor," she said. "We had to do something, so we took off. We were running through flooded streets, passing downed power lines."

She ended up at another school sheltering more than 2,000 people. It had mats to sleep on, emergency officials and supplies.  

Nearby, Loni Steingraph, 40, of Austin, Texas, praised the shelter, saying: "I booked a four-star hotel, I didn't know it would include a four-star shelter too."  

Hotel workers pushed furniture up against windows, but the force of the wind blasted through the improvised barriers. 

In the streets, office furniture and broken glass bobbed in water that sloshed between buildings. Residents watched the debris float by from upstairs balconies. Buildings shook in the wind as if earthquakes were hitting them, terrifying tourists and residents waiting out the storm in sweltering, dark shelters.  

"I feel for the citizens here because we get to go home eventually," said a tourist in Playa  who came with 32 family members for a wedding. "They have to stay and rebuild everything that was destroyed."  

President  Vicente Fox planned to travel to the affected region on Sunday. In a taped address to the nation, he said that, while the Mexican government was taking care of thousands of stranded tourists, it hadn't forgotten its citizens. 

"Make no mistake. Our priority, our job ... is with our own people," he said. 

The army and navy are already preparing emergency supplies, including food, water, medicine and roofing, in various southern cities. Fox said it will be sent in as soon as possible.  

The U.S. Embassy was sending consular officials to shelters Sunday, an effort to help people prepare for the evacuation of some 30,000 tourists after the storm.  

At 7 p.m. local time, Wilma was moving north near 3 mph with maximum sustained winds near 100 mph. It was located about 30 miles north-northwest of Cancun or about 390 miles west-southwest of Key West.  

Even as it battered the Riviera Maya, the storm's outer bands whipped the western tip of Cuba, where the government evacuated more than 500,000 people. A tornado spun off from the storm flattened 20 homes and several tobacco-curing huts. 

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Alpha has formed Saturday in the Caribbean Sea, setting the record for the most number of storms in an Atlantic hurricane season, forecasters said. Alpha is the season's 22nd tropical storm and marks the first time a letter from the Greek alphabet has been used because the list of storm names is used up. The previous record of 21 storms stood since 1933. 

At 7pm local time, Alpha had sustained winds of about 40 mph — 1 mph over the threshold for a tropical storm. It was centered about 70 miles south of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and moving northwest at about 15 mph, the Hurricane Center said.   It’s too early if Alpha would like to visit us here in the lovely Riviera Maya.

** The main editorial staff at PlayaMayaNews does NOT have net access.  As soon as staff gets back on line, we will have more extensive coverage.  We are doing the very best we can under the conditions.

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