Yucatan Relaxes Again as Emily’s Wrath Proves Less Than Expected

As work crews cleared away debris and thousands of tourists prepared to resume their vacations, officials and residents across Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula breathed a sigh of relief Monday that damage from Hurricane Emily appeared less extensive than many had feared.

No lives were reported lost as the storm swept across the popular resort area and into the Gulf of Mexico, felling power lines, uprooting trees, smashing windows, flooding streets and tearing the roofs off some houses and small buildings.

By Monday afternoon, signs of recovery were already evident. Many businesses along the white-sand beaches had reopened, Cancun’s international airport was operating, and work crews were sweeping up broken glass and carting away fallen palm trees. Electricity had been restored to much of the area.

But Mexican officials were hardly rejoicing. If Emily continues on its present course, forecasters expect it to make landfall again in northeastern Mexico or southern Texas late today or early Wednesday morning. In Tamaulipas state, federal troops and emergency personnel were evacuating a number of small fishing communities.

Emily’s winds, which at times have exceeded 150 mph, had diminished to about 110 mph after striking land. But the storm was expected to regain strength as it tracked northwest across the gulf’s warm waters.

In the Yucatan town of Playa del Carmen on Monday, Luis Manuel Huchin, supervisor of a beachfront hotel and souvenir shop complex, shoveled up broken glass, smashed tiles and ripped wooden molding.

“This area got hit hard, but it could have been worse,” he said.

Authorities reported similar damage throughout a 100-mile stretch of the Mexican coastline extending south from the tourist mecca of Cancun to the island of Cozumel and the ancient Maya site of Tulum, where the storm made landfall early Monday.

Some of the area’s many impoverished residents returned from emergency shelters to find their homes flooded and their roofs gone.

In Puerto Juarez, north of Cancun, Jaqueline Martin, 27, and two family members were placing a tarp on her cousin’s one-room house to keep out the steady drizzle falling in the hurricane’s wake.

“It’s just a little water, that’s all,” she said. “There was no major damage.”

Roberto Vargas Arzate, Cancun’s director of civil protection, said authorities were working to supply food and medicine.

Vargas could not estimate how many residents had been left homeless but said it was “much less than we were expecting.”

Some tourists who had passed the night at makeshift shelters in sweltering gymnasiums scrambled to find outward-bound flights. Others prepared to head to the beach or the bar.

“If you’re not hurt, if you’re not in mortal danger, you have no right to complain,” said Tom Hejl, 48, a Lakewood, Colo., tax auditor. “Don’t worry, be happy, end of story.”

Over the weekend, Mexican officials had rushed to evacuate 90,000 people throughout Quintana Roo state, including 30,000 tourists from Cancun and the rest of the so-called Riviera Maya.

Emily has been blamed for seven deaths: one in Grenada, four in Jamaica and two off the coast of Mexico, where a pair of helicopter pilots were killed in a Saturday night crash caused by strong winds as they attempted to evacuate offshore oil workers.

Some residents here said it would take a bigger storm than Emily to drive them away.

“This house is stronger than it looks,” said Felipe Uk, 64, sitting in front of the home he built out of wooden planks, cardboard, corrugated metal and thatch.

“When they tell me the winds are 200 mph, that’s when I’ll leave.”

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