admin @ Tue, 2005-10-25 05:46
CANCUN, Mexico -- As soon as the soldiers left, hundreds of people sloshed through downtown alleys, ripping off the metal shutters of stores and cleaning out merchandise.
Only price tags were left, floating in the flooded streets.
As I watched, they emptied nearly an entire city block within an hour.
"The hurricane was ugly. The people are worse," said Arturo Campos, whose shoe store was ransacked.
Hurricane Wilma unleashed a dark side of this resort city, as hundreds of desperate residents stole everything from food to pizza delivery motorcycles. Few stores had anything left by Monday. Most of the looting appeared to be carried out by locals.
It started Saturday, during the eye of the storm. People took advantage of the relative calm to drag tables, chairs and lamps from a furniture store, while others loaded up on cans of tuna and pasta at wrecked convenience stores.
On Sunday, as Hurricane Wilma's winds and rain eased, people emerged to search for necessities, walking into stores whose fronts had been ripped away and taking things like food, water and batteries.
Then they became bolder, pounding through boarded-up windows, forcing their way into department and appliance stores, piling clothes, TVs and other goods on bicycles and pickups.
Jeremy Dean, a 30-year-old financial adviser from Chattanooga, said he went in search of a working phone, and instead found looting everywhere.
"We stayed out of everybody's way, so it was OK," he said.
There were fears the looters might turn on the stranded tourists, although there is no evidence that happened.
"They see foreigners and they think we have money," said Aurilia Fernades, 38, of Spain.
Police struggled to control the crowds by setting up checkpoints to seize stolen goods and firing shots in the air to scare away crowds. But looters responded by throwing rocks and chunks of concrete.
"It's chaos," said fire official Gregorio Vergara. "They are taking things all over the city."
Miguel Navarrete, a taxi driver, said the police couldn't do anything.
"There were thousands and thousands of people taking everything and blocking the road," he said. "Yesterday, I saw a guy leave with a chain saw. 'It's not robbery. It's a necessity,' he told me. But that's not something you can eat."
Television images of the looting, including people sweeping medicine off pharmacy shelves, caught Mexico by surprise since Cancun is one of the country's most prosperous regions.
"Because they have insurance, the owners prefer that things get robbed," he said. "They are going to receive thousands of pesos anyway. What do they care about the merchandise?"
President Vicente Fox expressed concern that one of Mexico's biggest moneymakers -- the Caribbean coastal resorts -- would not fully recover for months. The booming string of hotels anchored by Cancun produce almost half of the country's $11 billion in yearly foreign tourism revenue.
Wilma's 120-mph winds and 60 inches of rain destroyed or damaged as much as 80 percent of the resort area's hotel rooms.
Lingering over the region for two days, the hurricane battered Cancun's line of luxury hotels into an expensive breakwater. Lobbies were heaped with twisted metal, broken marble and shattered glass. The beachfront was gone from some hotels, leaving their foundations exposed.
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