Hurricane Dean swept across the Yucatan peninsula last night, toppling trees, power lines and houses as it bore down on the heart of Mexico's oil industry.
While tourist resorts on the Mayan Riviera were spared, vulnerable Mayan villages were exposed to the full fury of one of the most intense storms ever recorded.
President Felipe Calderon said no deaths were immediately reported in Mexico, after Dean killed 13 people in the Caribbean. But driving rain, poor communications and impassable roads made it difficult to determine how isolated Mayan communities fared in the sparsely populated jungle where Dean made landfall as a ferocious Category 5 hurricane.
The path of Hurricane Dean
Hundreds of homes collapsed in Majahual when the eye of the storm passed almost directly overhead, crumpling steel girders, splintering wooden structures and washing away about half of the immense concrete dock that transformed the sleepy fishing village into one of Mexico's busiest cruise ship destination. The storm surge covered almost the entire town in waist-deep sea water.
The hurricane weakened over land but was expected to strengthen as its eye moved over the Bay of Campeche, home to more than 100 oil platforms and three major oil exporting ports.
The storm is projected to make landfall with renewed force this afternoon near Laguna Verde, Mexico's only nuclear power plant. Plant officials said late yesterday that they were suspending electricity production and sending many workers home.
While 50,000 tourists were safely evacuated from resorts on the Yucatan peninsula, many poor Indians closer to the storm's direct path refused military orders to leave their homes, according to Gen. Alfonso Garcia, who was running shelters in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 60 miles northwest of Majahual.
Troops evacuated more than 250 small communities, and 8,000 people took refuge in 500 shelters, said Jorge Acevedo, a Quintana Roo state spokesman. Others turned away soldiers with machetes and refused to leave, but some of them changed their minds when the winds and rain intensified, he said.
Little was known about the thousands who rode out the storm in low-lying communities of stick huts.
Mexican officials said they were making slow progress down nearly impassable unpaved roads to reach these places. In less isolated towns, people emerged to survey toppled trees and downed power lines crisscrossing flooded streets.
Dean's path takes it directly through the Cantarell oil field, Mexico's most productive. The entire field's operations were shut down just ahead of the storm, reducing daily production by 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
Insured losses from the storm are likely to range between $750 million and $1.5 billion, according to Risk Management Solutions, which calculates hurricane damage for the insurance industry. Most of that came in Jamaica, which said Tuesday it was postponing Aug. 27 general elections to survey the damage.
Mexico's insured losses won't exceed $400 million, predicted AIR Worldwide, another insurance consulting company.
AP