Wilma Turns Cancun Into New Orleans

See if any of this sounds familiar:

Dazed foreign tourists stranded in stinking shelters in this hurricane-hit Mexican beach resort demanded to be rescued Monday, and President Vicente Fox lost his cool at slow aid efforts.

Toilets overflowed and food was scarce at refuges in Cancun, where some 20,000 vacationers spent their fifth day sleeping on floors or in stuffy rooms without electricity or running water.

Hurricane Wilma, one of the strongest Atlantic storms recorded, wrecked Cancun at the weekend, gutting huge hotels before pounding Cuba and Florida.

Cancun is Mexico's main resort, a major source of jobs in the region and the jewel of a tourism industry that is the country's third-biggest earner of foreign currency.
Heavily armed federal police stood guard at supermarkets to prevent looting that broke out at the weekend, adding to the chaos. Authorities declared a night-time curfew.

Another 18,000 tourists were stuck in Playa del Carmen, down the coast from Cancun, and the Tourism Ministry said Wilma would cost Mexico's tourism industry $800 million.

A fist fight broke out overnight at the El Forito theater, which was holding some 300 mostly American and British package tourists evacuated from their lodgings, witnesses said.

"If some changes aren't made, it's going to get real nasty, because people's tempers are starting to get frazzled. You are living on rice and noodles and fruit," said Jim Pelinka, 54, a school administrator from Minnesota.

Tourists slept in two-hour shifts on the theater's wooden stage because there was not enough room in the building. It stank of overflowed toilets.

I'll never understand why people don't leave when they see these things coming.