Hurricane Wilma

Hurricane Wilma hit Cancun, Mexico on October 21, 2005. According to Andrew Gumbel of FOREIGN NEWS, Wilma reached a category 5 storm making it only the third hurricane to reach that intensity. Hurricane Wilma created winds of up to 120 mph and formed a 10 ft storm surge that flooded the area’s beachfront. Wilma made landfall in the morning on Friday the 21st and began inching across the Yucatan Peninsula at 3mph destroying everything in its path. This hurricane was expected to last for 4 hours, instead it lasted a devastating 64 hours. Hurricane Wilma finally stopped hovering over Cancun and made its way to the Gulf of Mexico, heading straight for Florida. Wilma left with 40 cm of rain and an unrecognizable city.

When Hurricane Wilma hit Cancun, it caused severe damage. The tourist strip, “the hotel zone” of Cancun was affected majorly. 24,000 luxurious hotel rooms had disappeared. A 13 kilometers stretch of beachfront was washed away. The famous soft white sand had vanished, exposing a line of ragged rocks. Wilma also affected the homes of hundreds of thousand Mexican residents. Robert D. McFaddan from the New York Times said, “In Cancun, 50 hotels and hundreds of homes were damaged, public buildings were crumbling, windows were shattered and a coast known as a tourists' playground overlooking a turquoise sea was transformed into a vast region of danger and destruction.

In the Yucatan, at least four deaths were reported, two in a gas tank explosion in Playa del Carmen and those of a woman electrocuted in Cancun and a 69-year-old man killed by falling branches in a neighboring state. The number of injuries in Mexico was unknown, as was the extent of property damage, but it was widespread and expected to run into many millions.” Hurricane Wilma killed a total 63 people in the Yucatan Peninsula, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Florida.

Here is an amazing video that shows the damage caused by this horrible hurricane: http://youtube.com/watch?v=mwjngRyJ5Zw