TULUM, Mexico — Hurricane Beryl ripped off roofs in Jamaica, snarled fishing boats in Barbados and damaged or destroyed 95 percent of homes on two islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines before roaring past the Cayman Islands and taking aim at Mexico's Caribbean coast early Thursday morning, killing not less than nine people.
The storm, which was the primary to become a Category 5 hurricane within the Atlantic, weakened to a Category 2 hurricane within the afternoon.
Jack Beven, senior hurricane specialist on the U.S. Hurricane Center, said “the greatest immediate threat now that the storm is moving away from the Cayman Islands is landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula” in Mexico.
The storm was centered roughly 215 kilometers west of the island of Grand Cayman and 445 kilometers east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico. It had maximum sustained winds of 175 km/h and was moving west-northwest at 30 km/h.
On Wednesday afternoon, Beryl's eyewall grazed the south coast of Jamaica. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said Jamaica had not yet experienced the “worst that could happen.”
On Thursday morning, telephone poles and trees blocked the streets in Kingston.
Authorities confirmed that a young man died on Wednesday when he was swept right into a sewer while attempting to rescue a ball. A girl also died when a house collapsed on her.
Residents took advantage of a break within the rain to start clearing debris.
Sixty-five percent of the island is without electricity, there isn’t any water connection and telecommunications are limited. Government officials are currently assessing the damage, but that is hampered by the dearth of communication, especially within the southern communities which were most affected.
Visiting the south-central community of Clarendon, residents were attempting to repair damaged roofs and clear fallen trees. Many roads in the world were partially blocked by fallen power and telecommunications poles.
Seymour, armed with a machete and attempting to clear the rubble with other residents, was grateful that he and his neighbors were spared.
“I'm just grateful to be alive, even though Beryl destroyed many roofs and we have no water or light (electricity),” he said, declining to present his last name.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said: “Weakening is expected over the next one to two days. However, Beryl is expected to remain a hurricane until it makes landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula.”
Emergency shelters have been arrange on Mexico's popular Caribbean coast, some small, distant coastal communities have been evacuated, and even sea turtle eggs have been faraway from beaches threatened by the storm surge.
In Playa del Carmen on Thursday, most stores were closed and a few boarded up their windows as tourists jogged by and a few locals walked their dogs in the intense sunshine. In Tulum, the Mexican Navy patrolled the streets, telling tourists in Spanish and English to organize for the storm's arrival. Everything was to be closed by noon.
Francisco Bencomo, general manager of the Umi hotel in Tulum, said all guests had left. “Under these conditions, we will be completely locked down,” he said, adding there aren’t any plans to welcome guests back before July 10.
“We've turned off gas and electricity. We also have an emergency floor that two maintenance people will cordon off,” he said from the hotel. “We've put them in the room furthest from the beach and the windows.”
“I hope that the impact on the hotel is as minimal as possible, that the hurricane passes quickly through Tulum and that it is nothing serious,” he said.
Myriam Setra, a 34-year-old tourist from Dallas, Texas, was eating a sandwich on the beach on Thursday. Her flight home was scheduled for Friday, but Beryl had not persuaded her to depart early.
“I thought I'd rather stay in Mexico one more day than go back to the U.S. two days early,” Setra said. “So I went out and bought some groceries. I thought we'd get the last of the sun today. And then we'll just hole up and stay inside until it's hopefully over.”
Cayman Islands Prime Minister Juliana O'Connor thanked residents and visitors on Thursday for contributing to the “collective calm” ahead of Beryl by adhering to storm protocols.
“We have done everything we can to address the various challenges that lie ahead,” she said at a press conference.
The head of Mexico's civil protection agency, Laura Velázquez, said Thursday that Beryl is predicted to be a Category 1 hurricane when it hits a comparatively sparsely populated stretch of Mexico's Caribbean coast south of Tulum early Friday.
But when Beryl resurfaces within the Gulf of Mexico a day later, it is predicted to achieve hurricane strength again and make landfall right on the Mexican-American border near Matamoros, an area that was already hit by Tropical Storm Alberto in June.
Velázquez said temporary shelters were being arrange in schools and hotels just in case. Her efforts to evacuate some high-risk villages – akin to Punta Allen, which sits on a narrow spit of land south of Tulum – have been only partially successful.
The storm had already shown its destructive potential in an extended strip of the southeastern Caribbean.
The worst probably happened earlier in Beryl's trajectory, when it collided with two small islands within the Lesser Antilles.
Three people were reportedly killed in Grenada and Carriacou, and one other in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, authorities said. Three more deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where 4 individuals are missing, authorities said.
In Grenada, one person died when a tree fell on a house, Environment Minister Kerryne James told the Associated Press.
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, has promised to rebuild the archipelago.
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