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Cancun hunkers down for Emily

CANCUN, Mexico - Hurricane Emily weakened slightly as it began lashing the beaches of the Yucatan peninsula on Sunday, hours after thousands of jittery tourists streamed out of their waterfront hotels and fled inland to shelter at schools and gymnasiums.

The Category 4 storm caused heavy flooding that swept four people to their deaths in Jamaica on Saturday. In Mexico, it downed signs, toppled trees and whipped sand from the beaches in Cancun.

Two people also were killed in a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico as more than 15,500 workers were evacuated from offshore oil platforms, raising to seven the number of people killed in the second major hurricane of the Atlantic season.

Emily's winds decreased from 145 mph to 135 mph as it bore down on the peninsula Sunday evening and would likely weaken further as it headed toward the gulf, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Emily was likely to make landfall again Wednesday in northeastern Mexico or southern Texas, said Jack Beven, the hurricane specialist at the Miami center. He cautioned it was too early to make a precise prediction.

In Cancun, hundreds of buses moved 30,000 tourists to temporary shelters, part of the 70,000 to 80,000 people being evacuated statewide from resorts like Tulum, Playa de Carmen and Cozumel. Cancun's airport closed Sunday afternoon after thousands lined up at ticket counters, trying to get flights out before the storm hit.

By late afternoon, heavy winds tugged at palm trees and sent the last people at the beach running for their cars. Erosion has long been a problem for Cancun, and waves were starting to lap almost at the doorsteps of some hotels.

Hundreds of mostly foreign tourists lay shoulder-to-shoulder on thin foam pads in a sweltering gymnasium near the center of Cancun, one of Mexico's most popular tourist destinations known for its white-sand beaches, sprawling hotel complexes and all-night discos.

The evacuees were given free bottled water and sandwiches, but many gasped when a hard rain rattled the metal roof of the building. Some asked how long they would have to remain.

"It's hot in here," said Beth McGhee, 46, a tourist from Independence, Mo. "We feel like we've been kept in the dark until this morning. But we're safe, and that's what's important."

Cancun's grim mayor, Francisco Alor, said the city was preparing for a near-direct hit by Emily.

"This hurricane is coming with the same force as Gilbert," he said referring to a notorious 1988 hurricane that killed 300 people in Mexico and the Caribbean.

The city's last big evacuation was for Gilbert. But in 1988, the city and surrounding resort areas had only about 8,000 hotel rooms. That number has since grown to more than 50,000.

Cancun is a narrow spit of land so covered by shoulder-to-shoulder hotels and upscale shops that it resembles a cross between Miami Beach and Las Vegas.

Tourism and hotel officials had said guests of beachside hotels would be relocated to ballrooms and convention centers in larger, well-protected hotels, but the first wave of evacuees was ferried to gymnasiums and schools.

In Jamaica, torrential rains drenched the south coast and washed away at least three houses, while a man, a woman, an infant boy and his 5-year-old sister were swept away in a car Saturday night. Searchers on Sunday found the four bodies trapped inside the car, which was filled with mud and other debris, police said.

The family had been driving through a flooded rural road in southwest Jamaica when a surge of water pushed them over a cliff.

The Cayman Islands escaped major damage Saturday. The islands and other Caribbean countries were devastated last year when three catastrophic hurricanes - Frances, Ivan and Jeanne - tore through the region with a collective ferocity not seen in years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

At 11 p.m. Sunday, Emily was at latitude 19.9 N and longitude 86.5 W, or about 50 miles south-southeast of Cozumel, an island just south of Cancun. It was moving to the west-northwest at 18 mph, and the highest sustained winds were 135 mph.

Earlier in the weekend, with peak winds of 155 mph, Emily became the strongest storm to form in the Atlantic basin this early since record-keeping began in 1851. In addition, with five named storms already, the season is off to the busiest start in history.

--Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers was used in this report.

[Last modified July 18, 2005, 01:38:10]