Mexico Abandons Oil Rigs Ahead of Dean

TULUM,Mexico-Tens of thousands of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan Riviera on Monday as monstrous Hurricane Dean roared toward the ancient ruins and modern oil installations of the Yucatan Peninsula.Mexico's state oil company,Petroleos de Mexico, said it was evacuating all of its more than 14,000 offshore workers in the southern Gulf of Mexico, which includes the giant Cantarell oil field.Cancun seemed likely to be spared a direct hit, but visitors abandoned its swank hotels to swarm outbound flights.Officials evacuated more rustic lodgings farther south,where Dean was expected to smash ashore early Tuesday.Dean already had winds of 150 mph as it brushed past the Cayman Islands on Monday, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm could grow even stronger-into a giant Category 5 hurricane-before striking Mexico. At 2 p.m. EDT, Dean was centered 330 miles east of Belize City, where authorities closed all hospitals and urged residents to leave.The storm-which killed at least 10 people across the Caribbean-was expected to slash across the Yucatan and emerge in the Gulf of Campeche, where Petroleos de Mexico decided Monday to shut down production on the offshore rigs that extract most of the nation's oil.Shutting the 407 oil wells in the Campeche Sound will result in a production loss of 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day,Pemex said.Of that, about 1.7 million barrels of oil a day is exported from three Gulf ports,where Pemex was loading the final tankers Monday morning before shutting them as well.Central Mexico was next on the storm's path, though the outer bands were likely to bring rain and gusty winds to south Texas, already saturated after an unusually rainy summer.At the southern tip of Texas, officials urged residents to evacuate ahead of the storm."Our mission is very simple.It's to get people out of the kill zone, to get people out of the danger area, which is the coastline of Texas,"said Johnny Cavazos,Cameron County's chief emergency director.Officials in the resort town of South Padre Island distributed sandbags after a state of emergency was declared.In Mexico, the Quintana Roo state government said about two-thirds of the 60,000 tourists in the Cancun area had left. Some camped overnight at the city's airport to ensure a flight out. Many others were turned away.Eric Morovich of Orange County, Calif.,waited outside the airport after trying unsuccessfully to book a ferry, rent a boat and charter an airplane."The next option is
swimming,I guess," he joked."I'm just hoping that we get out in time. We've got two little kids back in the States,"he said.But the heavyset Morovich wasn't too worried about survival, saying:"It would take at least a Category 5 to blow me away."The U.S. State Department sent about 20 workers to the area to help Americans, and set up a toll-free hot line (1-888-407-4747) to answer questions or concerns.Workers hammered plywood over the windows of hotels along the tourist strip, where the skyline is still marked with cranes used to repair the damage of Hurricane Wilma.That storm caused $3 billion in losses in 2005.Dean could be even stronger than Wilma, which stalled over Cancun and pummeled it for a day. The fast-moving Dean was passing farther south, and was likely to deliver a brief but powerful punch to Mexico's Maya heartland.That area stretches from the stunning seaside ruins of Tulum south to the growing beach resort at Mahahual, where authorities evacuated hundreds of tourists on Monday. Between the two lies the 2.5 million-acre Sian Kaan nature reserve, with a 1,200-year-old network of Mayan canals.Cancun still could face tropical storm-force winds - forecast to extend over an area of about 75,000 square miles, about the size of Nebraska or South Dakota.
"We're leaving. You don't play around with nature," fisherman Maclovio Manuel Kanul said, pulling equipment from his beachfront fishing shack near Cancun. "We still haven't been able to recover from Wilma, and now this is coming."Belize, just south of Mexico, evacuated 6,000 people from the country's main tourist resort, San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, and 500 or so from nearby Caye Caulker, said national emergency coordinator James Jan Mohammed. People were urged to leave low-lying areas.Authorities evacuated Belize City's three hospitals and were moving high-risk patients to the inland capital, Belmopan, founded after 1961's Hurricane Hattie devastated Belize City. Belize City Mayor Zenaida Moya urged people to leave, saying shelters aren't strong enough to withstand a storm of Dean's size.Dean, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, raked Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on Sunday, but both escaped the full brunt of the storm.In Jamaica, the storm uprooted trees, flooded roads and collapsed some buildings. Downed utility poles left thousands without electricity or telephone service. Police said two men were killed: one when his house collapsed and another struck by flying debris.The worst storm to hit Latin America in modern times was 1998's Hurricane Mitch, which killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing, most in Honduras and Nicaragua.
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