Residents of

Residents of are bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Delta, which is expected to make landfall as a Category 3 storm later this week after battering Mexico and forcing tourists into shelters at luxury hotels.  

The storm is expected to hit the Louisiana coast Friday night or Saturday morning.It’s the 25th named storm of the Atlantic’s unprecedented hurricane season. 

Delta was centered about 55 miles north-northeast of Puerto Progreso, just off the northern edge of the peninsula,and heading northwest at 17mph. 

President Donald Trump says he has spoken with the governors of Texas and Louisiana about Hurricane Delta and says that residents should heed the directions of state and local officials.

Trump says he was briefed on the storm and tweeted on Wednesday: ‘Please be prepared, be careful, and be safe!’

Louisiana Gov John Bel Edwards has requested a pre-landfall federal emergency declaration in a letter to Trump.

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‘Hurricane Delta is a dangerous storm that will bring strong winds, heavy rain, life-threatening storm surge and flooding to coastal Louisiana, and I am hopeful President Trump will quickly approve my request for a federal emergency declaration,’ Edwards said in a statement. 

‘All Louisianans should use today to prepare for Hurricane Delta, heeding the direction of their local leaders when it comes to evacuations.’ 

The state is still recovering from Hurricane Laura, which ravaged the southwestern region as it roared ashore as a Category 4 storm in August.

In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged the city’s residents to remain vigilant ahead of the storm. 

‘We stand ready,’ Cantrell at a news briefing Wednesday.

Colin Arnold, director of New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the storm’s projection remains uncertain but the forecast track is currently west of the city.

‘It was a monster before it hit the Yucatan,’ Arnold said of Delta.’And, we are on the east side of this, slightly out of the cone, but be careful. It could go either way, left or right.’

City officials said residents should expect anywhere from 4 to 8 inches of rain during the storm.

Meanwhile, officials said about 5,600 people evacuated from southwestern Louisiana after Hurricane Laura remain in New Orleans, down from a high of 12,000.

Arnold urged those evacuees who are considering driving back to their homes to be very careful and avoid doing so on Friday ‘when this thing starts coming ashore’.

The hurricane has already ruined dream vacations for thousands of tourists who were forced to pack into crowded emergency shelters at the risk of contracting or spreading the coronavirus as fierce winds and torrential rains battered Mexico’s top resort destination in Cancun. 

Delta made landfall at about 5.30am as an extremely dangerous Category 2 hurricane with winds of up to 110mph downing nearly 100 trees and knocking out power along the northeastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. 

The Hotel Association of Cancun said more than 40,000 tourists were evacuated from resorts in and around Cancun on Tuesday night as the hurricane’s winds topped 145mph before it weakened as it approached land. 

About 50 miles south of Cancun the four-star Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya was transformed into an emergency shelter as hundreds of guests were packed into common-area rooms like sardines. 

Photos and videos posted to social media showed families sitting side-by-side on rows of sun loungers transformed into makeshift cots – with few masks and little social distancing despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 

As of 1pm CDT Wednesday Delta was centered about 25 miles north of Cancun and was traveling northwest at a speed of between 15 and 20mph as wind speeds decreased slightly to about 100mph. 

The US National Hurricane Center in Miami warned of a storm surge that could raise water levels up to 13 feet and bring flash flooding inland.  

The storm is expected to continue affecting the Mexican coast through the end of the day before veering north toward the US Gulf Coast. 

Thousands of Quintana Roo residents and tourists checked in to dozens of government shelters to wait out the storm after everyone in the state was put under a 7pm curfew on Tuesday. 

Civil defense official Luís Alberto Ortega Vázquez said there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.He said about 39,000 people had been evacuated in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, and that about 2,700 people had taken refuge in storm shelters in the two states. 

Quintana Roo Gov Carlos Joaquin said the state government had prepared, but warned residents and tourists that ‘it is a strong, powerful hurricane,’ though he considered it a good sign that Delta had weakened a bit late Tuesday.He said the area hadn’t seen a storm like it since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. 

Throughout the day Tuesday evacuations of low lying areas, islands and the coastline expanded as Delta exploded over warm Caribbean waters, increasing in strength by 80mph in just 24 hours to become a major Category 4 hurricane. 

Much of Cancun’s hotel zone was cleared out as guests were bused to inland shelters.In Cancun alone, the government opened 160 shelters. 

More than 40,000 tourists in Cancun and neighboring resorts were evacuated, the head of the area’s hotel association, Roberto Citron, told AFP.  

Early Wednesday, some 300 guests and nearly 200 staff from the Fiesta Americana Condesa hotel awoke in the sweltering classrooms of the Technological Institute of Cancun campus where they had been moved the day before. 

All of the windows had been covered with plywood so they couldn’t see what was happening, but they said the howling winds started around 2am and there had been heavy rain. 

The power – and with it the air conditioning – had been knocked out early Wednesday so it was steamy as tourists awoke.

‘The hard part has been the waiting,’ Ana Karen Rodríguez of Monterrey told the Associated Press.She and a friend arrived in Cancun Tuesday morning and by afternoon were shuttled to the shelter. 

She said the hotel had planned well. ‘It’s been good. I feel comfortable actually.’

Photos showed the guests – all wearing masks – playing cards, watching videos on their phones and  calling residents on Tuesday night as they tried to get comfortable in the less-than-ideal surroundings. 

‘The hotel has done a good job of making sure that we were provided for and that we’re going to be safe here in this place, so we don’t have any concerns at all,’ said Shawn Sims, a tourist from Dallas sheltering with his wife, Rashonda Cooper, and their sons, seven-year-old Liam and four-year-old Easton.

‘This is my first (hurricane) experience, but I see that these guys have a plan and they know what they’re doing,’ Sims said. 

Other resorts took a different method of dealing with the weather, placing guests together in large event spaces for safety.

That’s what happened at the Hard Rock Riviera Maya, where Richard Murray II and Priscilla Pham-Murray, both 33 and from Pittsburgh, spent one night of their dream honeymoon sleeping in the same room as about 500 strangers on Wednesday. 

The couple were married in September 2019 but decided to wait a year to enjoy their honeymoon to ‘spread out the joy’.They arrived at the Hard Rock Riviera Maya on October 1 for their weeklong stay.

‘We knew the weather forecast was rainy but did not expect what was to come,’ Priscilla told DailyMail.com on Wednesday. 

‘There was a tropical storm Saturday and of course Hurricane Delta that hit early this morning.From what we’ve learned from staff, the area has not had a category 4 hurricane in about 15 years.’

Priscilla said staff told her that Tuesday marked the first time the Hard Rock Riviera has executed this kind of emergency protocol.

‘Last night they relocated everyone to the convention center, building by building,’ she said.’Each building had a specific time frame to check-in to the convention center. People staying at Hard Rock Cancun were transferred here since that was the main target of Delta and the buildings there are mostly glass and very tall.

‘We were all seated in a large conference/banquet room and they set up a few activities.They served snacks and also dinner. Afterwards, we were transferred to a large area where they had pool side lawn chairs set-up with blankets and sheets. 

‘They played movies on projector screens for kids and lights out was about 11. If you have any issues regarding where and how to use sewa proyektor, you can speak to us at our web-site. 30pm.Unfortunately, I’m a light sleeper and there was tons of snoring.

‘As it got closer to threat-time, they boarded up essential areas. The building is very solid so you could barely hear anything happening outside except maybe the rain.

‘Breakfast and lunch have been served.A staff member informed us that the state needs to visit the hotel and give the all-clear before releasing us back to our rooms… so right now it’s a waiting game. Our flight is scheduled for tomorrow so we’ll cut our losses and just be happy to get back to Pittsburgh and see our dogs.’

‘It didn’t ruin our honeymoon but it dampened it,’ Priscilla added.

State tourism officials said more than 40,000 tourists were in Quintana Roo, a fraction of what would normally be there.Delta’s damage comes on top of months of pandemic-induced lockdown that has devastated the state’s tourism industry.

At the Cancun Convention Center, 400 tourists from hotels and rental properties bunked for the night. 

<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news floatRHS" data-version="2" id="mol-70c69c60-08d6-11eb-99c2-215328fc4840" website braces for Category 3 Hurricane Delta to make landfall