Cancun evacuated for storm

CANCUN, Mexico -- Tourists packed Cancun's airport and shuttled from luxury hotels to spartan emergency shelters Thursday, desperately trying to escape Hurricane Wilma as its outer bands battered the resort's white-sand beaches. Cuba evacuated more than 200,000 people.\nWilma, a Category 4 storm with winds of 150 mph, churned toward the Yucatan peninsula and south Florida after its outer bands hit Haiti and Jamaica, where it killed at least 13 people. The storm was expected to strike Cancun and its surrounding resorts and sideswipe Cuba early Friday.\nForecasters said Wilma likely would make a sharp right turn toward Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency, after getting caught in the westerlies, the strong wind current that generally blows toward the east. It is expected to make landfall in Florida on Sunday.\n"At least for the next couple of days here, we think we're going to have a very powerful hurricane here in the Caribbean," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.\nBriefly the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, Wilma was a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm before weakening. Its 150 mph winds made it more powerful than Hurricane Katrina when it plowed into the Gulf coast of the United States on Aug. 29, killing more than 1,200 people.\nAt 5 p.m. EDT, the storm's wobbly center was roughly 135 miles southeast of Cozumel, a popular vacation island, the hurricane center said. Its forecast track would carry it directly to Cancun, a city of some 500,000 people by early Friday.\nThe storm had strengthened slightly, and forecasters said it could regain Category 5 strength winds of 156 mph or more.\n"This is getting very powerful, very threatening," Mexican President Vicente Fox said earlier.\nHundreds of schools in the Yucatan peninsula were ordered closed Thursday and Friday, and many were turned into shelters. Airlines started canceling flights.\nAt the Cancun airport, hundreds of tourists waited for flights or sought rental cars, taxis or ATMs.\nMatt Williams and Jeff Davidson of Westfield, N.J., were going back to their hotel in Playa del Carmen south of Cancun after their flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. was canceled. At the hotel, they faced a night in a ballroom-turned-emergency shelter.\n"You see the lines. I don't want to stand there for two hours and then decide what to do," said Williams, 26.\nAsked if Katrina was on his mind, he said: "You see that on TV, all that destruction. All you can do is hope that it doesn't happen here."\nIncreasingly high winds bent palm trees and strong waves pounded Cancun's beaches. Officials loaded tourists onto buses after rousting them from luxury hotels lining the strip between the Caribbean Sea and the Nichupte Lagoon.\nSome, like 30-year-old Carlos Porta of Barcelona, Spain, were handed plastic bags with a pillow and blanket. "From a luxury hotel to a shelter. It makes you angry, but what can you do?" he said. "It's just bad luck."\nMayor Francisco Antonio Alor said 20,000 tourists remained in the city Thursday, down from 35,000 the day before. He said he hoped most would be able to fly out on charters, but about 270 shelters were being prepared for those who had to stay.\n"It's important that the people understand they should leave for their own security," he said. "It is important that they understand the situation is very dangerous."\nEarly Wednesday, Wilma became the most intense hurricane recorded in the Atlantic. The storm's 882 millibars of pressure broke the record low of 888 set by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Lower pressure brings faster winds.\nQuintana Roo state officials urged the evacuation of nearby islands, and ferries carried throngs to the mainland, but not all agreed to flee.\nAsked by telephone if she was leaving Cozumel's Hotel Aguilar where she works, Maite Soberanis replied: "Not for anything. We're in the center of the island. We're protected. We are very secure. We've lived through Gilbert here. We know what to do."\nIn Cuba, whose tip is 130 miles east of Cancun, civil defense officials said 220,000 people were evacuated by midday, most from low-lying areas in the island's west.\nAn additional 14,500 students at boarding schools outside Havana were sent home until after the storm.