PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico—Hurricane Dean strengthened into a monster Category 5 storm Monday, threatening beach resorts on Mexico's Caribbean coast where thousands of tourists were huddled in makeshift shelters.
Dean, which has killed 11 people so far on Caribbean islands, packed howling winds of around 160 mph , as it bore down on the Yucatan Pensula, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Police ordered vehicles off the road and supermarket owners boarded up their windows on the "Mayan Riviera", a strip of beach resorts with bright white sands that is yet to fully recover from the devastation of Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
Category 5 is the strongest type of hurricane and can cause widespread damage. Dean was due to make landfall in a marshy area near Mexico's border with Belize early Tuesday. The state government declared a night curfew in the area.
Four hundred tourists crowded for refuge in a hotel in the resort of Playa del Carmen, with sometimes up to a dozen people per room.
"We're not happy about the conditions," said Kelly Bianchi, 30, a customer service agent and resident of New Orleans. She complained of a lack of information: "They don't tell us anything."
The looming storm brought back nightmare memories of Wilma, the strongest Atlantic storm recorded, which wrecked Cancun and other beach resorts. It washed away whole beaches, killed seven people and caused $2.6 billion in damages.
"A Category 5 is horrible. We've been through that," said Marcos Ruiz, 31, a tourism ministry official in Tulum, just north of Dean's path. "The wind is so strong you can't breathe."
Popular with European tourists, Tulum was particularly in danger as many of its arty hotels and cabins are built next to the sea.
Belize Threatened
Thousands of tourists and local residents were told to go to 2,000 shelters across the Yucatan Peninsula,
The sea around the island of Cozumel, normally busy with yachts, diving boats and cruise ships, was ominously free of vessels as the waves became choppy and the sky darkened.
Mexico is closing and evacuating all of its 407 oil and gas wells in the Campeche Sound due to Hurricane Dean, meaning lost production of 2.65 million barrels of crude per day.
Heavy rain began falling in Belize, a former British colony that is home to some 250,000 people and a famous barrier reef.
The Belizean government encouraged people to move inland and long lines of cars formed the highways heading west toward higher ground in the capital of Belmopan and San Ignacio, a town close to the jungly Guatemalan border.
Dean swiped Jamaica at the weekend with howling winds and pelting rain. Roads were blocked by toppled trees and power poles and police said two people, a 14-year-old girl and a 44-year-old farmer, were killed.
That took the death toll from Dean to eleven. Haiti was worst hit with four people dead there.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon was to cut short a visit to Canada, where he met President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to return home Tuesday to oversee the emergency effort.
The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour is to return to Earth from the International Space Station a day early in case the storm forces NASA to evacuate its Houston center.
Some 70,000 tourists have fled Cancun and the nearby area in recent days but the resort, whose five-star hotels were gutted by ferocious wind and waves in 2005, was not forecast to take a major hit this time around.
Poor local residents with badly built homes are often the worst hit by hurricanes in Mexico.
"Let's see if the house can stand it. If not, we'll go to the shelter," said Luisa Villafana, 27, an office cleaner who shares a thatched-roof home with eight other people near the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
Category 5 hurricanes are rare but in 2005 there were four, including Katrina which devastated New Orleans. The number of high power storms is reinforcing research that suggests global warming may increase the strength of tropical cyclones.
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