In Mexico, Hurricane Rina threatens Cancun and Cozumel
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REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities closed ports and began precautionary evacuations along beaches south of Cancun as Hurricane Rina threatened to hit one of the country’s best-known tourist stretches with high winds and heavy rains.
Rina, downgraded this morning to a Category 1 storm with top sustained winds of 85 mph, was expected to touch land Thursday afternoon on the island of Cozumel, a tourist favorite.
Communities along the Caribbean coast are expected to feel the first hurricane-force winds and heavy rain Thursday morning. But officials said it remained possible that Rina’s curling path would keep it at sea.
PHOTOS: Cancun braces for Hurricane Rina
By midday Wednesday, the hurricane was about 180 miles southeast of Cozumel, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. A hurricane warning was in effect for most of the northeastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula, including Cancun, Cozumel and Isla Mujeres.
An alert was in effect for the state of Quintana Roo, home to the high-rise hotels of Cancun and dozens of beachfront resorts along a picturesque white-sand coast known as the Riviera Maya.
Mexican authorities opened 1,131 temporary shelters in nine municipalities along the coast and evacuated 580 people in six municipalities deemed most at risk of storm damage. There was no immediate word of evacuations of tourists.
Military personnel were on standby and the government’s social-development agency said it was readying supplies of bottled water, canned tuna, beans, sugar, milk and other staples, along with trucks to distribute the food.
The state’s two major airports, including the one at Cancun, remained open. But seaports were closed and aquatic sports, such as diving and snorkeling, were barred.
In 2005, Hurricane Wilma caused heavy damage to Cancun.
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-- Ken Ellingwood