As Hurricane Approaches Cancun Resorts Empty, Will Rina Make Her Way to US?
![Hurricane Rina off Mexico](https://d.medicaldaily.com/en/full/221840/hurricane-rina-off-mexico.jpg?w=600&f=913d37b0f7166a2df37c1db8140fce0b)
Tourists have abandoned Cancun and other nearby resorts as Mexican authorities evacuated hundreds of residents from low-lying areas and closed schools due to the weekend Hurricane Rina that’s expected to pass over Yucatan’s Caribbean coast.
As reported by the Associated Press, civil protection officials moved some 2,300 people from Holbox, an island where the Caribbean meets the Gulf of Mexico, and the federal government closed the archaeological sites that dot the coast as NASA canceled an undersea laboratory mission near Key Largo, Florida, bringing the crew back to land.
Many tourists said that they were scheduled to leave on Wednesday anyway but some had to cut their vacation short.
“At the hotel, they told us they would make a decision whether to evacuate later today, but we didn't want to wait. We would rather be home when it hits," Janet Gallo of New York City told the AP, as she had to cut her 5-day trip to the town Playa del Carmen short.
Forecast predict that Rina will remain a hurricane as it sweeps along Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations in Cancun, Cozumel, and the Riviera Maya, although it has been predicted that Rina will weaken, with maximum sustained winds close to 75 mph early this morning, down from 110 mph yesterday.
Rina was about 115 miles south of Cozumel and was moving northwest at about 6mph.
Around 275 people living in Punta Allen were moved to emergency shelters and smaller groups were evacuated from the atoll of Banco Chinchorro.
“I am not really scared,” Luh McDevitt, 56, told the AP, an Ohio native who has lived in Cozumel since 2000.
“Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was a Category 5. The worst part of the hurricane is after. We didn't have electricity in our house for three weeks," she said.
The Mexican government plans to send nearly 2,400 electrical workers plus cranes, vehicles and generators to repair and maintain services as quickly as possible after the storm, the AP reported.
State Tourism Director Juan Carlos Gonzalez Hernandez told the AP there had been about 83,000 tourists in the state, with about 28,000 of them in Cancun and 45,000 more on the stretch of coast south of Cancun that includes Tulum and Playa de Carmen.
Hernandez estimated that 10,000 tourists had left by Wednesday night and that there were only about 1,719 tourists on Cozumel, and many of them had left.
Vance Gulliksen, spokesman for Carnival Cruise Lines, told the AP that at least eight cruise ships were changing itineraries away from the storm's path.
The projected track showed Rina curving east toward Cuba and the Straits of Florida after crossing the eastern tip of Yucatan, however the U.S. National Hurricane Center is uncertain whether or not the hurricane will hit the U.S. “there is great uncertainty as to where Rina will be located by the weekend."