MEXICO: Utility workers have begun restoring fallen power lines, bulldozers are clearing debris, as traffic police try to keep order on jammed streets that have just reopened after Hurricane Wilma pounded Mexico's premier resort. The region's economic lifeblood, the tourism industry, has been devastated; one estimate placed the damage to the hotel sector at $1.5 billion.
Residents hope that repairs go fast enough for hotels to reopen by Christmas, the high season when all of the city's 25,000 rooms are usually filled. But some buildings took heavy damage, including collapsed walls and roofs, so repairs could take months.
The storm arrived on Friday morning and left on Sunday before dawn, wreaking havoc up and down the Yucatan Peninsula's eastern coast. At least seven people were killed.
Workers cleared entrances in the string of luxury beachfront hotels badly damaged by the storm, while shop owners arrived at work early to take stock.
On Monday, Adriana Rodriguez started cleaning up the mess in which Wilma left the shoe store her mother, Mercedes Maldonado, opened 28 years ago. "We lost about 2,000 pairs of shoes,"said Ms Rodriguez. "The water outside was as high as the pay phone . . . Now we're going to clean up, throw out everything that was ruined and go forward."
Water three-feet high flooded the glass display in front and mould was already growing on loafers and baby shoes well above the floodwaters. In the back storeroom, the water had swamped the lower racks of shoes that stretched the width of the shop.
Ms Rodriguez and three employees spent the day moving out store counters and trying to "squeegee" the floor clean. The day went well. Tourists taking refuge in nearby motels bought 15 pairs of her undamaged stock, she said. Many were tossing out the wet shoes they had been wearing since the hurricane struck.
Others were not so lucky. Lucia Leah Huiton started her shop in 1978. On Friday, Wilma took it away. She piled salvaged T-shirts, serapes, and sombreros on a table in front of a school where more than 1,000 tourists had been cooped up since Friday.
Jesus Almaguer, president of the Quintana Roo Hotel Assuncion, told reporters that Cancun "could be ready for tourists in three to four months, if it receives support from the government."
After oil revenues and remittances from migrants, tourism is the third-most important source of foreign currency for the Mexican economy. Last year the country received a record 20½ million international visitors, and tourism accounted for about 8 per cent of the nation's gross domestic product.
This year - before Wilma - government officials were expecting at least 21 million international visitors. Cancun and the Yucatan beaches are the country's most popular destinations. One in three foreign tourists comes here. But Cancun airport remained closed on Monday, and people queuing for buses had to endure an hour's wait, or longer.