Hurricane Beryl, which ravaged the eastern Caribbean this week, leaving flattened islands, flooded communities and at least eight people dead, made landfall again early Friday morning in Mexico, just northeast of Tulum on the Yucatan Peninsula.
The storm, which this week became the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic, weakened early Friday to Category 2, with maximum sustained winds of up to 110 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center.
While the center predicted “dangerous” storm surges and hurricane-force winds, Mexican authorities took no chances. The government announced Thursday that it had deployed more than 13,000 workers and members of the armed forces, as well as rescue dogs, and had set up mobile kitchens and water treatment plants in Quintana Roo, a southern state facing the Caribbean that could be the first to feel the impact of the storm.
After the hurricane passed over Jamaica, residents emerged from shelters to see a landscape of devastated farmland, damaged homes and roads covered in toppled power poles and foliage.
“The whole place is in ruins,” Steve Taylor, a resident of the low-lying coastal town of Mitchell Town, told a local television station.
St. Elizabeth, an agricultural region known as the country’s breadbasket, has been particularly hard hit. “Southwestern St. Elizabeth is facing total devastation,” Jamaican Agriculture Minister Floyd Green said.
Despite the brutality of Hurricane Beryl, Jamaican officials who surveyed the damage said the situation could have been even worse.
“The damage was not what we had anticipated, and we are very grateful for that,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said. told CNN Thursday. “I think Jamaica has been spared the worst.”
So far, authorities say the storm appears to have caused few casualties in the Caribbean since it first made landfall in Grenada on Monday.
Meteorologists predicted that Mexico would be hit not once, but twice by the hurricane. It was set to cross the Yucatan Peninsula on Friday and then, after crossing the Gulf of Mexico, reach the coast of the northern state of Tamaulipas.
Evacuations were underway in Tulum and Felipe Carrillo Puerto, areas authorities said would be hardest hit by the storm.
In Cancun, a popular vacation destination, yachts were grouped in an inland waterway for added protection.
Anders Aasen and his family arrived at Cancun International Airport in Mexico on Thursday after traveling nearly 24 hours from Norway, unaware that a hurricane would also arrive there in a few hours.
“At the hotel, they didn’t give us any information about what was going to happen or what we had to do,” said Mr. Aasen, a 42-year-old entrepreneur who planned to travel to Cancun and Tulum with his wife and three children. He said the family had already spent $20,000 on their trip.
Most tourists who arrived at the airport on Thursday said they had not been informed in advance about the storm and added that neither travel agencies nor hotels had informed them of safety measures.
In the Gulf of Mexico, Shell Oil said it was evacuating nonessential workers from a floating oil platform. The platform, called Perdido, is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of Galveston, Texas, at a depth of about 8,000 feet (2,400 meters). The company said the hurricane had “no other impact on our production.”
The storm became the first Category 5 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, according to Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist at the University of Colorado who specializes in tropical cyclones. The previous record was set by Hurricane Emily on July 17, 2005, he said.
Meteorologists say Hurricane Beryl’s rapid escalation is a direct result of above-average sea surface temperatures and a harbinger of what could be a particularly difficult hurricane season.
Cayman Islanders breathed a sigh of relief after Category 3 Hurricane Beryl passed without making landfall Thursday morning. No major damage, injuries or deaths were reported. However, authorities said they were still assessing the storm’s effects.
In Jamaica, water and electricity supplies were slowly being restored in the worst-hit areas: the eastern and southern parishes of Kingston, the capital, Portland and other neighborhoods. More than 60 percent of customers were without water and electricity as of Thursday morning, representatives of major electricity providers told local media. Cellphone service was still unavailable in many parts of the country.
Jamaica’s Sangster International Airport in the tourist area of Montego Bay is expected to reopen later Thursday, the transport minister said. A declarationThe main airport, Norman Manley, remained closed for repairs but is expected to reopen on Friday.
The government has announced that public sector employees can return to work, while some commercial institutions have recalled their employees. The Central Bank of Jamaica has announced it will remain closed until Friday. Schools are closed for the summer.
Rebuilding has proven much more difficult on the islands hardest hit by the storm, including Grenada. Satellite images showed flattened homes and roofless buildings, with the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique the worst hit. Authorities said about 98 percent of the buildings had been destroyed.
In Argyle, a popular tourist town with dozens of Carriacou vacation rentals, before-and-after images showed structures reduced to rubble. The island’s docks, usually filled with boats, were empty. And along Carriacou’s northeast coast, the damage continued far inland, satellite images showed.
Tourism is one of the island’s main sources of income, and the airport and some hotels have reopened as clean-up operations have begun, the Grenada Hotel and Tourism Association said.
Lynsey Chutel, Daphne Ewing-Chow, Johnny Diaz And Ricardo Hernandez Ruiz contribution to the report.
