22 August 2007Yahoo! NewsTomas Sarmiento
Hurricane Dean raced through Mexico's southern Gulf on Wednesday, whipping up wild seas around oil platforms, but forecasters did not expect it to intensify sharply before hitting land again.
Dean hammered Mexico's Caribbean resort of Tulum and lashed the famous beach at Cancun before crossing the Yucatan Peninsula out into the Gulf of Mexico, where state oil company Pemex has several hundred wells and other installations.
The hurricane was carrying winds near 80 mph (130 kph) at 5 a.m. EDT. While the National Hurricane Center said Dean could intensify before hitting land again later on Wednesday, "re-intensification may be slower than previously thought." It appeared it would remain a Category 1 storm with winds below 95 mph (153 kph).
The storm was due to make landfall north of Veracruz. The Mexican government extended a hurricane warning northward along the Gulf Coast to La Cruz, the hurricane center said.
Dean should weaken again after landfall and dissipate within 48 hours after that, the center said.
Mexico evacuated more than 18,000 Pemex staff and shut down 80 percent of its crude production before the arrival of Dean, which was a potentially catastrophic Category 5 hurricane when it first hit land on Mexico's Caribbean coast.
There was no early word on whether oil platforms were damaged as Dean weakened and swept over the Campeche Sound.
"Pemex is waiting for the hurricane to pass through the Campeche Sound," spokeswoman Martha Avelar said on Tuesday.
The price of oil tumbled more than 2 percent on Tuesday as Dean weakened over the Yucatan, easing concerns that it would disrupt Mexican and U.S. oil operations.
INTO SHELTERS
Mexico, one of the top three suppliers of U.S. crude imports, has shut down 2.65 million barrels per day of production -- slightly more than Venezuela's total output -- and closed ports as a precaution.
Dean forced tens of thousands of people, including many tourists, into shelters on the Yucatan Peninsula, but there were no reports of deaths or serious damage in Mexico.
Store owners in Veracruz, a historic port near the site of 16th century Spanish conquerors' first landing in Mexico, boarded up windows.
"There has been panic buying of food in supermarkets," said Gabriela Navarrete, 35, who runs a bar in the port.
Dean destroyed small beach cabins and restaurants in the arty Caribbean resort of Tulum with strong waves and uprooted palm trees.
Dazed locals wandered across white sands strewn with rocks, garbage and bits of debris from small wooden and concrete huts popular with European and U.S. visitors.
But the "Mayan Riviera" was almost intact compared to the devastation wrought on hotels and tourist sites by Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
"We escaped. It was very light," said Miguel Cruz, 29, a hotel receptionist in the resort of Playa del Carmen.
Water surged down a main street at thigh level in Chetumal, a city of about 150,000 people near where the eye of the hurricane first hit land.
President Felipe Calderon said no deaths were reported in Mexico.
But Jamaican police raised the death toll to three from Dean's brush with the island last weekend. The storm has killed a total of 12 people in its run through the Caribbean.
Heavy rain drenched Belize, a former British colony that is home to some 250,000 people and a famous barrier reef. Sugar cane fields were flattened but there were no deaths reported.
Category 5 hurricanes are rare but there were four in 2005, including Katrina, which devastated New Orleans.
(Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in Belize, Cyntia Barrera in Mexico City and Horace Helps in Kingston)
