Hurricane Delta landed Wednesday (local time) just south of the Mexican resort of Cancun as an extremely dangerous Category 2 storm, felling trees and knocking off power along the northeast coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, but without immediate reports of death or injury.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said that satellite imagery and radar data from Cuba and surface observations in Mexico indicate that the center of Delta had landed at around 5:30 a.m. local time, with top winds of 175 km / h.
Civil defense official Luís Alberto Ortega Vázquez said there were no immediate reports of death or injury, but Delta had toppled about 95 trees and toppled electricity to parts of Cancun and Cozumel. Ortega said about 39,000 people had been evacuated in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, and about 2,700 people had taken refuge in storm shelters in both states.
Quintana Roo Gov. Carlos Joaquín said Wednesday morning that about half of the customers in Cancun, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen had lost power. There have been reports of some floods in Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. Overnight emergency calls came from people whose windows or doors were broken and taken to shelters, he said.
Joaquín said that within a few hours, hotels that did not suffer serious damage could hopefully begin to bring their guests back from the shelters. The storm was still over much of the state, but he said the state officials would soon evaluate the damage.
Early Wednesday, guests of the Fiesta Americana Condesa hotel woke up in the shimmering classrooms of the Cancun campus Technology Institute, where they had moved on Tuesday.
The situation for this stretch of the Mexican coast had appeared serious throughout the day of Tuesday.
Delta's strength increased by 80 mph (128 km / h) in just 24 hours, and its winds peaked at 145 mph (230 km / h) before being weakened as it approached the shore. Forecasters warned that there was still an extremely dangerous storm, with a life-threatening storm surge that could raise water levels from 9 to 13 feet (2.7 to 4 meters) along with large and dangerous waves and flash floods inland.
Thousands of residents and tourists from Quintana Roo were hunkering down in government shelters. They were all ordered off the streets by 7 p.m.
Evacuation of low-lying areas, islands,
State tourism officials have said that more than 40,000 tourists are in Quintana Roo, a fraction of what would normally be there. The damage to Delta comes on top of the months of a pandemic-induced lockdown that devastated the state's tourism industry.
At the Cancun Convention Center, 400 tourists from hotels and rental properties stayed overnight.
"We hope that we will be much safer in this place," said Marisol Vanegas, Secretary of Tourism for Quintana Roo. "This is a structure which has withstood other hurricanes."
Delta was expected to spend several hours beating the Yucatan Peninsula before moving into the Gulf of Mexico and growing into a "significantly larger" storm before hitting the US Gulf Coast. People in Louisiana or Mississippi should be preparing for hurricane-force winds to start hitting their coasts on Friday, advised the hurricane center.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said Delta was expected to land on Friday night or Saturday morning, and the whole state is on the path of the storm. State and local officials in coastal areas have been shoring levees, sandblasting, and other protection measures, he said.
Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Laura, which devastated the southwest region as it roared ashore as a Category 4 storm in August.
More than 6600 evacuees of Laura remain in hotels around the state, mainly in New Orleans, because their homes are too badly damaged to be returned.
Mexico has placed the captain of its navy in charge of the federal response. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that 5000 federal troops and emergency personnel were deployed in Quintana Roo to assist in the storm effort.
and coastlines increased as Delta exploded over warm Caribbean waters offshore. Much of Cancun's hotel zone was cleared as guests were taken to inland shelters. The government opened 160 shelters in Cancun alone.
Juan Carlos Avila and his seven-month pregnant wife, Joselyn, and their three-year-old son, Alexander, arrived at the Tech Institute in Cancun. He said Tuesday night, the staff made them comfortable and seemed well prepared.
The family living in Miami had been to Cancun for a week and had already gone through the Tropical Storm Gamma, which had soaked up the area over the weekend.
"We've practically lived in the storms of our stay here in Cancun," Avila said.
