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In Florida, officials ordered tourists out of the Florida Keys by noon Wednesday, with evacuation of 80,000 residents to begin today, Reuters reported. Officials in Haiti said 11 people had been killed by flooding, and one death was reported in Jamaica, as both Caribbean nations were hit by heavy rains on Wilma's fringes. Wilma is the 21st tropical storm of this season, tying the record set in 1933. The World Meteorological Organization has reached the end of the alphabet — it doesn't use the letters Q, U, X, Y or Z — for the first time since tropical storms began to be named in 1953. "As of this moment we don't expect a direct hit on the [Mexican] coast," said Jaime Albarran, spokesman for Mexico's National Weather Service. "But we do expect a very strong impact in the extreme north" of the Yucatan peninsula. Mexican authorities ordered the evacuation Wednesday of 60,000 tourists from the area. Tourists packed the airport at Cancun, in the state of Quintana Roo. With most flights full, local authorities provided buses. In the nearby resort of Playa del Carmen, MTV postponed its Latin American Music Video Awards, as Colombian pop singer Shakira and others evacuated ahead of the storm. But in the fishing town of San Felipe, about 100 miles northeast of Merida, capital of the state of Yucatan, no one had yet evacuated. San Felipe Mayor Raul Erosa Diaz said in a telephone interview that local residents were taking their boats out of the water and tying down the roofs of their homes. "If the order to evacuate were to come now, everyone would be ready," Erosa said as a light rain fell in the town. He said he expected some flooding: In 2002, Hurricane Isidore sent a fleet of boats floating into San Felipe. But in July, Hurricane Emily left only limited damage when it rolled through the peninsula. If Wilma were to make landfall on the Yucatan, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said, the storm surge could reach 7 to 10 feet above normal tide levels. In Honduras, where thousands were killed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, tourists also were evacuated from coastal and island resorts. A "red alert" warning was issued to about 760,000 residents. |