Taking shelter

As Hurricane Delta makes landfall in Mexico, residents and tourists hunker down

CANCUN, Mexico — Hurricane Delta made landfall in Mexico on Wednesday as an extremely dangerous Category 2 storm, coming ashore near Puerto Morelos along the northeastern coast of Yucatan Peninsula.

The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said satellite imagery, radar data from Cuba and surface observations in Mexico indicated that the center of Delta came ashore around 5:30 am local time sustaining top winds of 175 kilometers per hour.

Forecasters had warned it was still an extremely dangerous storm despite it weakening, saying it threatened to bring a life-threatening storm surge that could raise water levels 2.7 to 4 meters, along with large and dangerous waves and flash flooding inland.

Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquin had warned residents and tourists that “it is a strong, powerful hurricane”. He said that the state government had prepared, but the area had not seen a storm like it since Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

With everyone ordered off the streets by 7 pm on Tuesday, thousands of Quintana Roo residents and tourists waited for the storm hunkered down in dozens of government shelters. Much of Cancun’s hotel zone was cleared out as guests were bused to inland shelters. In Cancun alone, the government opened 160 shelters.

At the Cancun Convention Center, 400 tourists from hotels and rental properties sheltered for the night.

“We think that in this place we are much safer,” Quintana Roo Tourism Secretary Marisol Vanegas said. “This is a structure that has withstood other hurricanes.”

40,000 tourists

Nearly 300 guests and 200 staff from the Fiesta Americana Condesa hotel were taken to the Technological Institute of Cancun campus. All wearing masks, they spread out on thin mattresses in a classroom building and tried to get comfortable as workers boarded the building’s windows in a light rain. Some played cards or watched videos on their phones, while others called relatives.

“The hotel has done a good job of making sure that we were provided for and that we’re going to be safe here in this place, so we don’t have any concerns at all,” said Shawn Sims, a tourist from Dallas sheltering with his wife, Rashonda Cooper, and their sons, 7-year-old Liam and 4-year-old Easton.

“This is my first (hurricane) experience, but I see that these guys have a plan and they know what they’re doing,” Sims said.

Tourism officials said more than 40,000 tourists were in Quintana Roo, although because of the COVID-19 pandemic that is a fraction of what would normally be there.

Delta was forecast to spend several hours lashing the Yucatan Peninsula before moving into the Gulf of Mexico and strengthening again before striking the US coast later in the week.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said Delta was expected to make landfall there on Friday night or Saturday morning and the entire state is in the possible path of the storm. State and local officials in coastal areas were shoring up levees, sandbagging and taking other protection measures, he said.