Dean Bears Down on Mexico's Oil Industry

Two couples look at the ocean as Hurricane Dean approaches the area in Cancun, southeastern Mexico, Monday, Aug. 20, 2007. Hurricane Dean spared the Cayman Islands the worst of its fury on Monday as it headed for a collision course with Mexico's resort-dotted Caribbean coast. (AP Photo/ Eduardo Verdugo) (Eduardo Verdugo - AP)

Little was known about the thousands who rode out the storm in low-lying communities of stick huts.

"I'm really worried the hurricane passed over the Mayan communities, which are the poorest on the Yucatan peninsula," Calderon said before leaving Canada on a flight to Chetumal to assess the damage.

Mexican officials said they were making slow progress down nearly impassable unpaved roads to reach these places. In less isolated towns, people emerged to survey toppled trees and downed power lines crisscrossing flooded streets.

"If only the government would lend us a hand," said Georgina Hernandez, 59, whose three children all lost their homes in the town of Los Limones.

Dean's path takes it directly through the Cantarell oil field, Mexico's most productive. The entire field's operations were shut down just ahead of the storm, reducing daily production by 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Insured losses from the storm are likely to range between $750 million and $1.5 billion, according to Risk Management Solutions, which calculates hurricane damage for the insurance industry. Most of that came in Jamaica, which said Tuesday it was postponing Aug. 27 general elections to survey the damage.

Mexico's insured losses won't exceed $400 million, predicted AIR Worldwide, another insurance consulting company.

Dean hit Mexico early Tuesday along a sparsely populated coastline, well to the south of major resorts. The brunt of the storm struck the state capital of Chetumal, where residents spent a harrowing night with windows shattering and heavy water tanks flying off rooftops. Sirens wailed for hours as the storm battered the city, hurling billboards down streets. The Federal Electricity Commission said 90,000 customers remained without power by midday.

Electricity was also out to most of Belize, where no deaths or major injuries were reported. Just south of the Mexican border in Corozal, Dean flipped a residential trailer, blew roofs from homes and flooded streets.

Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute said no damage was reported at any of the archaeological sites in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan. Officials also closed all sites in Campeche and Veracruz as Dean approached.

The latest forecast put the storm on target to hit land again Wednesday afternoon at Tecolutla, a coastal river town about halfway between Tampico and Veracruz. The area is an oil-industry hub, dotted with derricks and pipelines on land and home to many of the workers who maintain seven oil platforms a half-hour helicopter ride offshore.

Authorities said that 700 shelters were readied in Veracruz and that more than 5,000 soldiers and aid workers had been deployed throughout the state.