Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Dogs dodging Delta
Storm knocks out power on peninsula
CANCUN, Mexico — Hurricane Delta emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and headed toward Louisiana after making landfall just south of the Mexican resort of Cancun, toppling trees and cutting power to residents of the Yucatan peninsula’s resort-studded coast.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Delta had weakened to a Category 1 storm after moving across land by late afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, but it was expected to gain strength again before lashing the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Delta is expected to make landfall, possibly as a Category 3 storm, sometime Friday south of Morgan City, La.
People in Louisiana or Mississippi should prepare now for hurricane-force winds to begin hitting their coastlines on Friday, the hurricane center advised.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Delta was expected to make landfall there Friday night or Saturday morning, and the entire state is in the storm’s possible path. State and local officials in coastal areas were shoring up levees, sandbagging and taking other protections measures, he said.
Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Laura, which ravaged the southwestern region as it roared ashore as a Category 4 storm in August. More than 6,600 Laura evacuees remain in hotels around the state, mainly in New Orleans, because their homes are too heavily damaged to return.
The hurricane reached shore in Mexico around 5:30 a. m. Wednesday with top winds of 110 mph. Officials said it caused no deaths or injuries, but did force hundreds of tourists to take refuge in storm shelters. It knocked out power to about 266,000 customers, or about one-third of the total on the Yucatan peninsula.
There were no reports of any deaths or injuries, said Carlos Joaquin Gonzalez, the governor of the state of Quintana Roo.
“Fortunately, the most dangerous part of the hurricane has passed,” Joaquin Gonzalez said, noting that the big problem was downed trees that had knocked out power lines and blocked roadways.
Civil defense official Luis Alberto Ortega Vazquez said about 39,000 people had been evacuated in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, and that about 2,700 people had taken refuge in storm shelters in the two states. Joaquin Gonzalez said that as of Wednesday afternoon some tourists who had to take refuge at storm shelters had not been allowed to return to their hotels, where cleanup was underway. He said he hoped they would be able to return by the end of the day.
There were reports of some flooding in Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. Overnight emergency calls came in from people whose windows or doors were broken, and they were taken to shelters, he said.
Early Wednesday, guests of the Fiesta Americana Condesa hotel awoke in the sweltering classrooms of the Technological Institute of Cancun campus where they had been moved Tuesday.
All of the windows at the campus had been covered with plywood so they couldn’t see what was happening, but they said the howling winds started around 2 a.m. and there had been heavy rain. The power — and with it the air conditioning — had been knocked out early Wednesday.
By early afternoon they were returned to their hotel and the state announced that businesses could reopen at 3 p.m., and the ban on alcohol sales was lifted.
In a residential neighborhood on the south side of Cancun, downed trees littered streets. Neighbors with machetes worked alongside firefighters and soldiers to clear the fallen timber.