Powerful Hurricane Emily was lashing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and its popular beach resorts early on Monday with 215kph winds and drenching rains, forecasters said.
”The centre of Hurricane Emily made landfall just north of Tulum, Mexico, near 6.30am [GMT] this morning,” the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said.
”The northern eyewall, where the worst weather would be expected, passed directly over Cozumel.”
Forecasters warned of storm surge flooding of up to 3,6m and 12cm to 30cm of rainfall.
Hurricane-force winds extend 95km from the eye of the storm, they said.
The storm was barrelling north-northwest at a brisk pace of 30kph.
”Some weakening will occur as Emily moves over northern Yucatan this morning,” the hurricane centre said.
A Mexican tourism official earlier said zones about 100km south of the Cancun resort area were bearing the brunt of the storm as it began crossing the peninsula in south-eastern Mexico.
”Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Tulum are the hardest hit,” said Jose Reivosa, an official with the Cancun tourist office.
Emily already caused two deaths in Mexico when violent winds slammed a helicopter trying to evacuate an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, killing the pilot and co-pilot, Mexico’s oil monopoly Pemex said.
Cancun’s international airport was closed on Sunday at about 5pm local time after more than 8 000 tourists flew home earlier in the day.
Officials in the peninsula states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan issued emergency alerts and advisories to evacuate tourist resorts.
”About 23 000 tourists, vacationing largely in Cancun and the Mayan Riviera, will be taken to shelters,” said a statement earlier on Sunday by Quintana Roo, the state where Cancun is located.
About 30 000 of the 80 000 tourists in the area cut short their vacations, officials said.
”More than 46 000 people have abandoned Quintana Roo,” the state health secretariat said.
Mexican President Vicente Fox deployed truckloads of emergency supplies to threatened areas.
Earlier, Emily roared past Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, packing intense winds and rains but causing less damage than feared.
”I’m grateful,” Kingston mayor Desmond McKenzie said Saturday. ”It doesn’t seem as bad as we expected.”
On Thursday, Emily whacked Grenada, killing one man when a mudslide destroyed his home, the National Disaster Management Agency there reported.
After leaving Yucatan, the hurricane is likely to cross the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall again near the Mexican city of Matamoros and neighbouring Brownsville in the American state of Texas late on Tuesday, the hurricane centre said.
Emily is the second major storm to hit the region in two weeks following Hurricane Dennis, which left at least 62 dead, mostly in Haiti.
Typhoon hits Taiwan, heads for China
At least 77 000 people have been evacuated in the coastal city of Wenzhou in eastern China as Typhoon Haitang bore down on the region after pounding Taiwan with heavy winds and rain on Monday.
The Zhejiang provincial meteorological station forecast that Haitang will make landfall between the southern part of Zhejiang and the central regions of Fujian province on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported.
In preparation, 77 000 people have been evacuated in Wenzhou alone.
The agency said the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters also issued a circular ordering residents at risk in Fujian to be moved to safety, although it was not clear how many had been evacuated.
Provincial governments ordered flood-control authorities to be on high alert as they worked to avoid the massive destruction and loss of life suffered by the area last year when Typhoon Rananim ripped ashore.
Rananim, the strongest storm to hit China in almost 50 years, left at least 164 people dead and 1 800 injured when it slammed into Zhejiang in July last year.
In Wenzhou, authorities have arranged round-the-clock patrols at reservoirs and embankments and recalled all fishing boats, Xinhua said.
According to weather reports, strong gales were already sweeping over the coastal areas of northern and central Fujian.
East China is prone to typhoons and has been pummelled by at least 15 over the past 50 years. The deadliest on record was in 1997, when 236 people were killed.
Haitang pounded central Taiwan with heavy winds and rain on Monday, injuring 34 people and shutting down airports, schools, government offices and financial markets.
Even while the storm was still out at sea, its gusting winds of up to 227kph wreaked havoc across Taiwan as the government warned of possible flash floods and landslides. — Sapa-AFP