Playa del Carmen, Mexico – Hurricane Emily ripped roofs off luxury hotels along Mexico’s Mayan Riviera, stranded thousands of tourists and left hundreds of local residents homeless Monday, forcing many to remain in crowded, leaky shelters.
Residents of Yucatan Peninsula resorts, including Playa del Carmen and Tulum, began wading through knee-deep floodwaters to assess damage under a light drizzle as the storm barreled into the Gulf of Mexico.
There were no immediate reports of death or serious injuries, but Emily was expected to regain strength before slamming into northeastern Mexico or southern Texas as early as tonight.
From the port of Tampico to the southern Texas coastline, residents boarded up windows and evacuated low-lying areas. Mexico’s state-run oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, evacuated 15,000 workers from rigs in Emily’s path.
The worst damage on the Yucatan Peninsula was in Puerto Aventuras, where the storm’s eye came ashore about 60 miles south of the resort of Cancun, and in Tulum, a collection of thatched-hut hotels along a secluded strip of beach that is popular with backpackers.
Sitting in the roofless, rain- soaked lobby of the Copacabana Hotel near Puerto Aventuras, Samuel Norrod of Livingston, Tenn., waited to hear whether he, his wife and his 13-year-old granddaughter could get a flight home. They rode out the storm in the hotel’s ballroom.
“We could hear the windows smashing out. The wind would get loud, and then it would get soft again. And then, for about 25 minutes, it got real still,” he said.
Quintana Roo state officials reported little damage to the ancient pyramids in Tulum or elsewhere, but a team of archaeologists was to inspect sites throughout the state.
