Hotels empty as Hurricane Wilma roars in

Desperate tourists, trapped after Mexico’s Cancun airport closed, shuttled from luxury hotels to emergency shelters ahead of Hurricane Wilma, which forecasters say is growing stronger.

Cuba evacuated more than 200,000 people as the storm approached.

Mexican officials said the hurricane, which killed at least 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica, is expected to make a direct hit at top speed on the island of Cozumel today, then slam Cancun and sideswipe Cuba. Forecasters said it would then swing around to the north east and charge at hurricane-weary Florida on Sunday.

“The most important thing now … is to protect lives, protect the lives of our children, of our grandparents,” President Vicente Fox said in a broadcast to the nation.

Briefly the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, Wilma remained a “potentially catastrophic” Category 4 hurricane, forecasters said. Its 150mph winds made it more powerful than Hurricane Katrina at the time it ploughed into the US Gulf Coast on August 29, killing more than 1,200 people.

The National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida, said that by early today, the storm’s wobbly centre was roughly 100 miles south east of Cozumel, a popular holiday island where the storm was likely to hit first before heading to Cancun.

While hundreds were evacuated from Cozumel, 970 tourists stayed on the island, mainly at hotel ballrooms being used as storm shelters. About 20,000 tourists remained at shelters and hotels on the mainland south of Cancun, and an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 in the city itself.

The Mexican government said the slow-moving hurricane, which was heading north west at about 6mph, was expected to churn over land for almost a full day. Tropical storm-force winds and rains were already hitting Cozumel last night.

In Cancun, high winds bent palm trees and waves gobbled the city’s white-sand beaches.

Hundreds of schools in the Yucatan peninsula were ordered to shut yesterday and many were turned into shelters.

Before it closed in the late afternoon, the Cancun airport was packed with lines of hundreds waiting for flights and queues of dozens seeking rental cars, taxis or automatic teller machines.

Officials loaded tourists on to buses after rousting them out of a string of luxury hotels lining the precarious strip between the Caribbean and the Nichupte Lagoon. By last night, 47 hotels were evacuated and the normally busy tourist zone was deserted.

Some, like 30-year-old Carlos Porta of Barcelona, Spain, were handed plastic bags with a pillow and blanket.

“From a luxury hotel to a shelter. It makes you angry. But what can you do?” he said. “It’s just bad luck.”

Early on Wednesday, Wilma became the most intense hurricane recorded in the Atlantic. The storm's 882 millibars of pressure broke the record low of 888 set by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Lower pressure brings faster winds.