Storm Leaves 6 Dead After Lashing Mexico

Boats and seaweed littered the streets of this city hundreds of yards from shore Thursday after Hurricane Gilbert battered the Yucatan Peninsula and headed north along the Gulf of Mexico.

Six people, including two babies, died as the storm passed over the Yucatan.

In Campeche, the state capital on the peninsula’s west coast, “there is no light, there is no radio, there is nothing,” said Ramon Castillo, a night watchman at the newspaper Novedades de Campeche.

“The whole city is flooded. Everything is dark,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life and I have never seen bad weather like this. People are scared.”

Along the northern Mexican gulf coast, authorities evacuated fishing villages and towns as Gilbert churned in that direction with 120-m.p.h. winds. When the hurricane slammed into the Caribbean resort of Cancun on Wednesday morning, winds topped 160 m.p.h.

The storm left much of the Yucatan without communications, electricity or drinking water. Airports were closed, most roads were blocked and supplies were running low. Campeche’s governor declared the state a disaster area Thursday and appealed for relief supplies.

Thousands of tourists in resort areas were stranded, many surviving on cookies and milk handed out in the shelters.

Littered With Trees

The storm lifted boats from their moorings and clumps of seaweed and deposited them on Campeche streets. Much of the city was left flooded and littered with uprooted trees before the storm moved on.

“It’s still moving west-northwest, which is good news for Texas but not so good news for the northern part of Mexico,” said National Hurricane Center director Robert Sheets in Coral Gables, Fla.

Luis Montiel, spokesman for the Tamaulipas state government, said people were evacuated from fishing villages and towns on the northern coast into shelters in Matamoros, a city of 400,000 about 12 miles inland near the Texas border city of Brownsville.

Farther south, the oil port of Tampico, with a population of 700,000, evacuated people from low-lying marshy areas to higher ground, said Montiel, speaking in a telephone interview from the state capital of Ciudad Victoria.

Twenty-four-foot waves from the hurricane pounded the popular resorts of Cancun and Cozumel early Wednesday, inflicting heavy damage on hotels and stranding thousands of tourists.

Drenched Capital

As the storm charged into the Gulf of Mexico, it drenched the Yucatan state capital of Merida and the gulf port cities of Puerto Progreso and Ciudad del Carmen.

Many areas in Yucatan remained cut off from the outside world, so there were no comprehensive reports on injuries and property damage.

Authorities were particularly concerned about Isla Mujeres, a tiny resort island just off Cancun. A navy spokesman in Mexico City said he had no word on the plight of an estimated 15,000 people stranded there. Three ferries linking the island with the mainland were lost in the storm.

In Campeche, two babies drowned as residents of a poor, low-lying neighborhood tried to flee, said Omar Cantu, editor of Novedades de Campeche.

Four people died when a wall collapsed on them in the town of Dzidzantun north of Merida, Yucatan Gov. Victor Manzanillo Shaffer told reporters in Merida.

Changed the Coastline

Manzanillo said 20,000 people had taken refuge in shelters in Merida and crop damage was extensive. He said the storm changed the coastline, with familiar beaches vanishing and new ones appearing.

The state of Yucatan has a population of about 1.2 million people. The entire Yucatan Peninsula, which also includes the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche, has a population of about 2 million.

A top government official said the army was taking a portable communications tower and a ground satellite dish to Cancun. He said the government hoped to have telephone, radio and television communications restored today.

The Interior Ministry said three trucks containing food, medicine and clothing were en route to Cancun.

6,000 Tourists Seek Shelter

Civil defense officials said 6,000 tourists left beachside motels and 30,000 local people also sought shelter. The storm hit just before the height of the tourist season.