In Cancun Hotel, They Shouldered the Hurricane

The men worked three at a time, pushing shoulder to shoulder on the emergency doors in the hotel stairwell. Hurricane Wilma was pushing on the other side.

The storm had smashed windows on the south side of the five-story hotel, and rain had flooded every room. By nightfall Friday, 83 guests and workers had retreated to the building’s two concrete stairwells.

They were a mix of Mexican businessmen and stranded tourists. A few stayed in flooded rooms, afraid to leave. But most chose the stairwells after engineers in the group vouched for their safety.

One of the stairwells began to shake about 10 p.m. The wind roared and then whistled through the cracks in the doorways.

A woman passed out evangelical Christian pamphlets and then led those around her in the Lord’s Prayer.

“This is a tribulation,” she told the others, “but we are taught to give thanks even in the face of tribulation.”

Gusts of warm, moist wind raced up the stairwell every few minutes, refreshing the hot, sticky air around the huddled guests.

Just before midnight, the stairwell doors began to burst open. Eduardo Soto, who works for Nextel and lives in the central Mexican state of Queretaro, organized teams of men to hold the doors on every floor: half an hour per shift.

The City Express Hotel is a no-nonsense lodging at the edge of town -- about three miles from the beach. It’s convenient for business travelers who aren’t here for the sugary sand beaches or the famous nightlife. The 145-mph winds of Hurricane Wilma turned the hotel into a last-ditch refuge.

“There was no hurricane when I got here,” Soto said. “It just hit and I couldn’t get a flight out.”

As the winds grew in strength Friday, knocking over trees and power lines, hotel crews boarded up ground-floor windows and stragglers took the last rooms. As the hours passed, the winds tore at the lobby windows, ripping out the plywood and sending people running.

Hotel manager Izadora Magana huddled with her staff and agreed that when the hurricane struck, the stairwells would be the safest place to wait out the storm.

People carried pillows and blankets to the concrete sanctuaries, where they lined the steps from the first to the fifth floor.

Among the refugees was a Chicago couple who had been caught by surprise by the storm, a quartet of MTV producers (whose awards show had been unexpectedly canceled), a California woman who said she was hiding from her husband, a Chiapas engineer who came to build pharmacies and an Australian news cameraman.

As the storm strengthened, the hotel’s generator was shut down to save fuel and people shared flashlights.

Wilma had punched out windows and some interior walls. The breach set off a fire alarm, and flashing white lights cast a strobe over everyone.

A debate raged over the physics of hurricane winds. Julio Cesar Manalla, an engineer from Chiapas, argued it would be better to open the doors. The stairwell, he said, would harmlessly funnel the wind out. Others thought it was crazy to let the devil in the front door.

The engineer won by default about 1:30 a.m. Wind and rain weakened a strip of drywall in one of the stairwell’s doorways, and Wilma pushed her way through.

Manalla was right: In the stairwell, the hurricane was tamed into a strong breeze.

By dawn, the winds had calmed as the eye of Hurricane Wilma passed. The last cigarettes were passed among the men who had worked through the night, and one man retrieved a bottle of vodka. The liquor was poured into cups. Soon they were laughing and retelling the story of how they had tried to hold back a hurricane.

“This is what Mexicans do,” Soto said. “We work hard, work together.”