Hurricane Beryl made landfall on Mexico’s coast near the resort of Tulum as a Category 2 storm early Friday, whipping trees and knocking out power as it came ashore after leaving a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said that Beryl is expected to rapidly weaken to a tropical storm as it crosses over the Yucatan Peninsula before it re-emerges into the Gulf of Mexico and likely regains hurricane strength.
Once in the warm waters of the Gulf, Beryl is forecast to head toward northern Mexico near the Texas border, an area that had already been soaked by tropical storm Alberto just a couple of weeks ago.
Once the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, Beryl spread destruction in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Barbados in recent days.
Only a few metres above sea level
Shortly after landfall, Beryl’s maximum wind speeds had decreased to 160 km/h, according to the U.S. Hurricane Center.
Mexican authorities had moved some tourists and residents out of low-lying areas around the Yucatan peninsula before landfall, but tens of thousands remained to tough out the winds and expected storm surge. Much of the area around Tulum is just a few metres above sea level.
The city was plunged into darkness when the storm knocked out power as it came ashore. Screeching winds set off car alarms across the town.
Beryl has made landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 2 hurricane about 10 kilometres northeast of Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort of Tulum with maximum sustained winds of 175 km/h.
Once a sleepy, laid-back village, in recent years Tulum has boomed with unrestrained development and now has about 50,000 permanent residents and at least as many tourists on an average day. The resort now has its own international airport.
Early Friday, the storm’s centre was about 25 kilometres north-northwest of Tulum and was moving west-northwest at about 24 km/h, the hurricane center said.
As the wind began gusting over Tulum’s beaches, four-wheelers with megaphones rolled along the sand telling people to leave. Tourists snapped photos of the growing surf, but military personnel urged them to leave.
‘We’re going to hunker down’
Authorities around the Yucatan peninsula have prepared shelters, evacuated some small outlying coastal communities and even moved sea turtle eggs off beaches threatened by storm surge. In Tulum, authorities shut things down and evacuated beachside hotels.
Tourists were also taking precautions.
“This morning we woke up and just filled all of our empty water bottles with water from the tap and put it in the freezer so we will have water to flush the toilet,” said Lara Marsters, 54, a therapist visiting Tulum from Boise, Idaho.
“We expect that the power will go out … We’re going to hunker down and stay safe.”
Velazquez said temporary storm shelters were in place at schools and hotels but efforts to evacuate a few highly exposed villages — such as Punta Allen, which sits on a narrow spit of land south of Tulum — and Mahahual, farther south — had been only partially successful.
Earlier, Beryl wreaked havoc in the Caribbean. The hurricane damaged or destroyed 95 per cent of homes on a pair of islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, jumbled fishing boats in Barbados and ripped off roofs and knocked out electricity in Jamaica.
On Union Island, part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a man who identified himself as Captain Baga described the storm’s impact, including how he had filled two 7,500-litre rubber water tanks in preparation.
“I strapped them down securely on six sides; and I watched the wind lift those tanks and take them away — filled with water,” he said Thursday. “I’m a sailor and I never believed wind could do what I saw it do, if anyone [had] ever told me wind could do that, I would have told them they lie!”
The island was littered with debris from homes that looked like they had exploded.
Deaths in multiple countries
Girlyn Williams and Jeremiah Forde were trying to recover what they could Thursday around their home, where only a concrete foundation remained.
They had run from room to room during the storm as different sections of their house were being destroyed. Eventually, they hid in a small space created by a rubber water tank that got wedged between the house and a concrete tank. Williams cut her leg in the scramble and needed six stitches.
Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said. Three other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where four people were missing, officials said.
In the Pacific, tropical depression Aletta was located about 485 kilometres south-southeast of the southern tip of Baja California with maximum sustained winds of 55 km/h, and was forecast to head away from land and dissipate by the weekend.
