Hurricane Lashes Mexico Coastline

Packing winds up to 135 mph, Hurricane Emily hit Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula early today, uprooting trees, knocking out power and phone lines and lashing the area with howling winds and driving rain.

Tens of thousands of tourists evacuated their luxury beach hotels and locals took shelter in schools and community centers Sunday night as the hurricane approached. Even before it reached land, the unusually powerful early-season storm had been blamed for the deaths of at least seven people as it churned northwest across the Caribbean toward Cozumel island and Cancun.

Mexican officials had rushed to evacuate 90,000 people throughout Quintana Roo state, including 30,000 tourists from Cancun and the Riviera Maya. Local governments dispatched hundreds of buses Sunday to ferry tens of thousands of tourists to inland hotels, schools and a convention center. Thousands more tourists fled the state between Friday and Sunday.

At Cancun’s international airport, hundreds of anxious travelers waited in line Sunday to catch one of the few remaining outbound flights before the hurricane’s arrival.

“We’re on the last train out of Dodge,” said Joe McHenry, 63, emeritus director of the Dallas Margarita Society, a philanthropic organization, as he and 140 other members of his group waited for a midafternoon charter flight.

Pemex, Mexico’s oil monopoly, shut down 63 wells in the southern Gulf of Mexico and evacuated about 15,000 workers from offshore rigs. Two helicopter pilots were killed in a Saturday night crash caused by strong winds during the evacuations.

Emily was also blamed for one death in Grenada and four in Jamaica, where two adults and two children were killed when their car was swept over a cliff by surging flood waters.

At one point, Emily was on the verge of being declared a Category 5 hurricane, the most intense type, characterized by sustained wind speeds in excess of 155 mph and capable of knocking over buildings. Such storms are rare in the Caribbean this time of year.

Emily’s winds weakened slightly as it approached Mexico.

The season’s second major hurricane, Emily follows only days after Hurricane Dennis rolled through Cuba, Haiti and Florida, killing at least 46 people, according to an Associated Press tally. If Emily continues on its present course, forecasters expect it to cross the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall again in northeastern Mexico or southern Texas sometime this week.

In September 1988, Hurricane Gilbert slammed into the Yucatan peninsula before whipping across the Gulf of Mexico and striking the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, leaving about 300 people dead.

Some here were critical of the weekend’s evacuation effort, saying they believed that Mexican officials had been caught off-guard by Emily’s ferocity and had not given the public adequate warning.

Mark Wilson, a Jet Ski tour guide and former Florida resident who now lives in Cancun, said he had been glued to the Internet and television watching Emily’s progress and didn’t like what he was seeing.

“If this thing doesn’t take a dip north or south, this is going to be a catastrophic event,” he said. “The Mexican government should have evacuated this whole place. It’s completely irresponsible.”

Against his better judgment, Wilson said, he was staying, but only because he didn’t have a vehicle in which to load his possessions. “If I had a car, believe me, I’d be out of here,” he said.

Tiffini and Ronald Hubbard, both 31, of Carson, Calif., said they had flown into the area Saturday night and were outraged that no one with their airline or at their resort had informed them of the hurricane.

The couple, who are celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary, said they learned the news from another tourist.

“If I would’ve known a hurricane was coming, I never would have been on that plane,” said Ronald Hubbard, who works for the Ralphs grocery chain. The couple had been evacuated from their hotel to the Cancun convention center, which was converted into an emergency shelter.

Other tourists at the center took a more philosophical approach. Richard Napier, 35, and his wife Shakyryn, 26, from Arlington, Texas, planned to wait out the storm playing Scrabble.

“We’re going to miss some of our vacation,” Shakyryn Napier said, “but some of these people are going to lose their homes. That really puts it in perspective.”

In Colonia Bonfil, a poor neighborhood of cinderblock homes and wood-and-cardboard shanties a world away from the glittering resorts, several residents seemed unfazed by the hurricane’s menacing advance.

Gabriel Rolon Ricardez, an 18-year-old construction worker, said he and his family would be staying at their neighbors’ cinderblock house. Speaking of his family’s three-room, tin-roofed shack, he said: “If it gets destroyed, we’ll rebuild it. There’s nothing else we can do.”

Cancun’s world-renowned party zone of nightclubs and restaurants, normally packed with revelers on the weekend, attracted thin crowds Saturday night. Popular bars such as Daddy O’s and Coco Bongo shut their doors soon after midnight for lack of business. A few die-hards shimmied to rap music at the Lucky Monkey, even though authorities had imposed a ban on alcohol sales ahead of Emily’s expected arrival. Nearby, workers boarded up windows along the strip, stacked furniture and dismantled outdoor sound systems.

Brian Pane, a 28-year-old tourist from Santa Monica, wasn’t much in the mood for a hurricane party. His friends had managed to catch flights out of Cancun on Saturday.

Pane wasn’t as lucky and faced the prospect of having to weather the storm at his hotel.

“I survived the Northridge earthquake” in 1994, “so I guess I can survive anything,” Pane said, as passersby laughed and chatted. “But this is surreal. People are still walking around like nothing is happening. I don’t think they have any idea how bad this is going to be.”

Back in Colonia Bonfil, Maria Cocomperalta, her husband, Federico, and their three children planned to ride out the hurricane in their one-bedroom home. “We’re going to pass the night reading the Bible,” she said. “God is powerful.”

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Dickerson reported from Cancun and Johnson from Mexico City. Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.