Tourists shelter in Mexico from giant hurricane

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico Aug 21 (Reuters) Thousands of tourists crammed into shelters on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Monday to escape Hurricane Dean, a potentially catastrophic storm that killed 11 people in the Caribbean.

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 has yet to fully recover from the devastation of Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

With winds near 245 kph, Dean was strengthening and very close to becoming a rare Category 5 -- the fiercest type of hurricane -- before making landfall near Mexico's border with Belize early today, the US National Hurricane Center said.

About 400 frustrated tourists crowded for refuge in a hotel in the Playa del Carmen beach resort, with 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. ''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 dollars 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.

Heavy rain began falling in Belize, a former British colony that is home to some 250,000 people, dense jungle and a famous barrier reef.

Belize's government encouraged people to move inland and long lines of cars formed on highways heading west toward higher ground in the capital of Belmopan and San Ignacio, a town close to the 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 11. Haiti was worst hit with four people dead there.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said he would cut short a visit to Canada, where he met US President George W Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to return home today to oversee the emergency effort.

The US 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.

The eye of Dean was 335 km east of the Yucatan last evening.

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.

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.

Reuters CS VP0615