By Jason Lange
LOS CABOS, Mexico (Reuters) - Hurricane Jimena, an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, slammed Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Tuesday, drenching the Los Cabos resort area where tourists hunkered in boarded-up hotels.
Rain poured down from gray skies as Jimena's howling winds hit the tip of the peninsula, home to world-class golf courses, yachting marinas and lively all-inclusive hotels. The hurricane was set to make landfall in the early hours of Wednesday in a sparsely populated area farther up the peninsula.
Hotels nailed boards over their windows and wrapped exposed furniture with plastic. A swanky beachfront hotel at Cabo San Lucas tied a fountain statue of sea god Neptune to palm trees and anchored a lobby chandelier to the ground with ropes to prevent them from blowing away.
Residents, many of them poor hotel workers or builders, huddled into shelters and some U.S. tourists found themselves trapped as flights out were full or canceled.
"It makes me a bit anxious. I've never experienced anything remotely like this," said real estate investor Reg Wilson, 36, from Orange County, California, who was unable to get on a flight out.
"I have no idea what to expect. We don't have a lot of options so we just have to ride this out."
Jimena came close overnight to being declared a Category 5 hurricane -- the top of the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale and potentially devastating -- but then winds calmed slightly to 145 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
People in Los Cabos were still scared. "I've never seen a storm this big in the 23 years I have lived here," said Caterina Acevedo.
Jimena's winds knocked down a power line, which lay on the ground firing sparks into the air.
Mexico has no Pacific oil installations or significant coffee and mining interests in the area. The port of Cabo San Lucas was closed.
A meeting of economy officials from dozens of countries to discuss tax havens, hosted by the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, had to be moved from Los Cabos to Mexico City as the storm threat grew.
EMERGENCY SHELTERS
Much of Baja California is desert and mountains that are popular with nature lovers, surfers, sport fishermen and retirees. Los Cabos, normally bathed in brilliant sun from dawn to dusk, was rainy and windy.
Civil protection authorities opened emergency shelters in schools for the area's poorest residents, many of whom live in plywood shacks, but few seemed keen to leave. Empty city buses waited for voluntary evacuees.
"It's very worrying. I had to come here because I was with a friend in a cardboard house," said construction worker Rene Carrera, 33, at a school turned into a shelter.
No comments:
Post a Comment