TULUM, Mexico (AP) — After leaving a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean and killing at least nine people, Hurricane Beryl weakened as it moved over open water toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday. the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean to category 2 in the evening.
Jack Beven, senior hurricane specialist at the US Hurricane Center, said: “The greatest immediate threat as the storm moves away from the Cayman Islands is that the storm makes landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula.”
The center of the storm was located about 180 miles (295 kilometers) east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico, on Thursday afternoon. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) and was moving west-northwest at 20 mph (about 31 km/h).
Beryl was expected to bring heavy rain and winds to Mexico’s Caribbean coast before crossing the Yucatan Peninsula and regaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico before striking northeastern Mexico for a second time.
As winds began to whip across Tulum’s white-sand beaches Thursday afternoon, four-wheelers with bullhorns rolled across the sand, telling people to leave. Tourists snapped photos of the growing surf, but military personnel urged them to leave as Beryl headed toward an expected landfall near Tulum early Friday morning.
In recent days, Beryl damaged or destroyed 95% of homes on two islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, overturned fishing boats in Barbados and swept away roofs in Jamaica before the storm swept past the Cayman Islands on Thursday morning.
Mexico’s popular Caribbean coast has prepared shelters, evacuated some small remote coastal communities and even Sea turtle eggs off beaches threatened by storm surge.
In Playa del Carmen, most businesses were closed on Thursday, with some boarding up windows as tourists jogged by and some locals walked their dogs under sunny skies. In Tulum, authorities closed everything and evacuated beachfront hotels.
Francisco Bencomo, general manager of Hotel Umi in Tulum, said all guests had left. “With these conditions, we are completely locked down,” he said, adding that there were no plans to have guests return before July 10.
“We have turned off the gas and electricity. We also have an emergency floor where we will lock two maintenance workers,” he said from the hotel. “We are going to have them stay in the room that is furthest from the beach and the windows.”
“I hope the impact on the hotel is minimal, that the hurricane passes Tulum quickly and that it is nothing serious,” he said.
Tourists also took precautions. Lara Marsters, 54, a therapist visiting Tulum from Boise, Idaho, said, “This morning we woke up and filled all of our empty water bottles with tap water and put it in the freezer … so we had water to flush the toilet.”
“We expect power to go out,” Marsters said. “We’re going to hunker down and stay safe.”
Myriam Setra, a 34-year-old tourist from Dallas, Texas, ate a sandwich on the beach Thursday morning and said, “I thought we’d get the last rays of sunshine today. And then it’s just a matter of staying inside and staying in bed until it’s hopefully over.”
The head of Mexico’s civil protection agency, Laura Velázquez, said Thursday that Beryl is expected to be a Category 1 hurricane when it hits a relatively sparsely populated area around Tulum on Friday morning.
But once Beryl resurfaces in the Gulf of Mexico a day later, she said, it is expected to re-intensify to hurricane strength and could strike near the Mexico-U.S. border near Matamoros, an area that was already battered by Tropical Storm Alberto in June.
Velázquez said temporary shelters had been placed at schools and hotels, but that efforts to evacuate some highly vulnerable villages — such as Punta Allen, which sits on a narrow spit of land south of Tulum — and Mahahual, further south — had been only partially successful.
The worst of Beryl’s damage appeared to be behind it. The eyewall hit Jamaica’s southern coast Wednesday afternoon, while telephone poles and trees blocked roads in Kingston Thursday morning.
Authorities confirmed that a young man died Wednesday after he was dragged into a storm drain while trying to retrieve a ball. A woman also died after a house collapsed on her.
Residents took advantage of the rain break to begin clearing debris.
Sixty percent of the island remained without electricity, along with a lack of water and limited telecommunications. Government officials were assessing the damage, but were hampered by the lack of communications, especially in southern parishes that suffered the most damage.
About 1,432 people remained in shelters in Jamaica, including Desrine Campbell, a resident of the low-lying community of Old Harbour Bay, who cried, “My house is almost under water!”
Nearby, Carlton Golding said with regret, “This time I’ve lost everything.” Golding’s home was completely destroyed by the hurricane. It was the second time he had suffered damage from storms.
In the south-central parish of Clarendon, residents tried to repair damaged roofs and clear fallen trees. Many roads in the area remained partially blocked by fallen power and telecommunications poles.
Cayman Islands Prime Minister Juliana O’Connor on Thursday thanked residents and visitors for helping to maintain “collective calm” ahead of Beryl by following storm protocols.
Michelle Forbes, director of the National Emergency Management Organization for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said about 95% of homes in Mayreau and Union Island were damaged by Hurricane Beryl.
Three people were killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said. Three other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where four people were missing, officials said.
According to Environment Minister Kerryne James, one person died in Grenada after a tree fell on a house.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines has pledged to rebuild the archipelago.
Separately, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Thursday that Tropical Storm Aletta had formed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico. Aletta, which was located about 190 miles (310 kilometers) from Manzanillo and had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph), was expected to drift away from land and dissipate over the weekend.
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Myers reported from Kingston, Jamaica. Associated Press writers Renloy Trail in Kingston, Jamaica; Mark Stevenson, María Verza and Mariana Martínez Barba in Mexico City; Coral Murphy Marcos in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Lucanus Ollivierre in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, contributed to this report.