Word: cancun
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shipworkers strike in Poland; Hurricane Gilbert in Cancun; a new leader for Mexico...
Afterward Gilbert nearly doubled in force, making it, like Camille in 1969, a rare Category 5 hurricane, as it smashed into the Yucatan at dawn on Wednesday. In the flashy resort city of Cancun, authorities evacuated several thousand people, mostly vacationers. But the poor had no place to go. Winds leveled their often flimsy dwellings, and flood tides washed them away. Some 30,000 were left homeless in Yucatan state and about 10,000 more in Campeche on the peninsula's west coast...
...Gilbert's freakiest turns came when its winds caught up a 300-ft.- long Cuban freighter five miles out in the Gulf. Mountainous waves heaved the ship all the way onto the shore at Cancun beach, where it smashed into a structure and came to rest on the sand...
Late in the week some parts of the Yucatan peninsula remained under 10 ft. of water, and seafront hotels were reporting extensive damage by high waves that rolled over seawalls and bashed through first-floor areas. Damage in Cancun was so extensive that one hotelier predicted it would require at least a month to clean up before reopening for business...
...people who need to be concerned now are those people over on the Yucatan Peninsula--Cancun, Cozumel, that whole area," Sheets said...