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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2005 
American Tourists Find Their Way Home After Hurricane Wilma
 James C. Mckinley Jr. - NYTimes
| | Tourists wait to leave Cancun at the main bus station after Hurricane Wilma caused widespread damage. (Photo: AP) |
Merida, Mexico - In the annals of modern travel, few horror stories can compete with those being told by American tourists who thronged the airport, trying desperately to find a way home after surviving Hurricane Wilma.
Many had spent as many as five days in squalid public shelters in Cancun during the hurricane and its aftermath, then endured a 12 hour ride through flooded highways to get to this city, 197 miles to the west, only to find they could not get a flight out.
“I am about to lose it,” said Lakeyda Timmons, a 27-year-old Wal-Mart manager from Kingston, N.Y., summing up the general mood in the crowded terminal. She was waiting in a fifty-yard long line to buy a ticket to anywhere in the states. “We’ve been lied to and lied to and lied to.”
Ms. Timmons and hundreds of other United States residents arrived here late last night on 18 buses the American Embassy and the Mexican government had chartered to take them from shelters in Cancun, where the airport is closed.
But when they arrived, they found the airport gates closed. They were forced to spend the night sleeping on the floor of a high school gymnasium.
Merida’s small airport was jammed with exhausted people, sitting on suitcases and plastic chairs, collapsed on the lawn outside, frantically calling travel agents on their cellular telephones and generally losing their tempers.
Several said they were disappointed the American government had not done more to evacuate them from Cancun, where there is still no running water or electricity, three days after Hurricane Wilma left.
Judith Bryant, a spokesman for the American Embassy, said another 8 buses full of tired tourists left Cancun for Merida, along with dozens of buses provided by private tour companies whose guests had weathered the storm.
She estimated about 6,000 American tourists still remained in temporary shelters or small hotels in the resort city, where 230 kilometer an hour winds turned the famed strip of luxury hotels into something resembling Beirut in the 1970s.
The airport in Cancun remained closed, having suffered severe structural damage. It still lacks a control tower, electricity and radar. Three emergency flights from Mexicana airlines along with a couple of charter planes were allowed to land today, but it was unclear when it could handle heavy traffic, Ms. Bryant said.
In the meantime, bus after bus disgorged tourists at Merida, where the lines and confusion grew. “We were led to believe, at least I was, that there was a plan that was going to be able to take us,” said Greg Cunningham, 42, of Sterling, Va, who arrived this morning on a bus with his wife, Lea. “When we arrived here they don’t know anything about it.”
Among the most unhappy travelers waiting in the airport were a group of Americans who had the misfortune to choose the Riu hotel chain for their Caribbean vacation. On Thursday morning, hours before the winds began, they were evacuated with little notice to a cultural center in downtown Cancun.
That night, the roof blew off the shelter and they had to make their way across the street to the LaSalle Academy in high winds, holding a rope. From that point on, things became increasingly ugly, they said. From Thursday night until Monday, the Mexican authorities kept them from leaving the shelter.
There was no running water. The toilets overflowed with sewage. Food ran short and they survived on tuna fish, crackers and some water delivered by the Mexican marines.
On Sunday, looters tried to break in to the shelter to rob them. Soldiers drove off the looters by firing into the air.
“There were rats and cockroaches,” recalled Jacinda Corning, a 32 year old paralegal from Kenai, Alaska. “People were starting to throw up and get sick,” her husband, Jesse Corning, said. She went on: “We lived on bread and water. The Mexican government wouldn’t let us do anything.”
Mexican officials told the group they could not retrieve their luggage from the Riu Cancun Hotel, which is on the barrier island studded with resorts. Some ignored the order and did it anyway, discovering the warning of the government were overblown.
“We were told for three days the hotel zone was flooded out, that there were crocodiles out there,” said Don Forbush, 48, a nuclear project manager from Ohio. “Then four of us went out there in a taxi and just walked right in.”
The group at the LaSalle school was one of the first to accept the consulate’s offer of a bus to Merida, even though tour companies like Funjet, Expedia.com and Apple Tours warned them they would lose their return tickets. Then they arrived after the airport had closed, and in the morning discovered there were no seats available on any flights.
One problem is that only Continental Airlines and the three main Mexican airlines have landing rights in Merida, though the Mexican government has told U.S. diplomats they would allow other airlines to land there during this emergency.
Frontier Airlines, the Denver-based low-fare carrier, does not normally fly out of Merida, but sought special permission from the Mexican government over the weekend to do so to transport Americans home.
Another low-fare airline, USA 3000, sent 12, 168-passenger Airbus A320s to Cancun on Monday to pick up 2,162 passengers, said Angus Kinnear, the airline’s chief operating officer, American Airlines is not operating any flights to Cancun and Cozumel, but hopes to soon, according to an airline spokesman, Tim Smith. Delta Air Lines has not operated any flights to Cancun and Cozumel since Monday, but has permission to run some extra flights, at least for a day.
Another obstacle is simply the small size and staff of the airport. As a result, many of the Americans who had lived through the storm and traveled to Merida were forking over more than $1,000 to fly to Dallas on Mexicana or Aeromexico, in the hopes of finding another flight to their home towns. Most had given up on ever using their return tickets. Some could not get tickets out of Mexico until Wednesday or, in some cases, the weekend, but planned to sleep in the airport for fear of missing a flight.
“Anything to get back the United States at this point,” said Scott Hill, a maintenance technician from Cleveland. “I would have financed my home to get back to the United States.”
Mr. Corning added: “All I know is I’m going to get to American soil and I am never coming back.”
Christopher Elliott contributed reporting from Orlando, Fla. |
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