WILMA TURNS VACATION INTO A NIGHTMARE.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Sarah Pritchett moved to Mexico three years ago to escape Eugene's rainy weather, but on Oct. 21, the former hairstylist found herself engulfed in a storm like none she had ever witnessed.

That was the day Hurricane Wilma landed on the Caribbean coastal island of Cozumel, where Pritchett and her husband, Tommie, own a four-room vacation villa. The hurricane, which was briefly rated as a Category 5 storm, was the most intense ever spawned in the Atlantic Basin. It lashed the island with 140 mph winds, tearing palm trees out of the ground, sending 27-foot swells over the downtown seawall and rolling cars onto their roofs.

"The air was so white with water it looked like it was snowing," Pritchett said, speaking by phone from Mexico. "It sounded like you were in a washing machine with jet engines ... You couldn't ever really sleep because the sounds were so eerie and you were sopping up water and you were worried about your neighbors."

Pritchett and her husband (and their neighbors) escaped Wilma largely unscathed. For 2 1/2 days they hunkered down in their guest house, Villa Zaztun, trying to stay safe and dry. Aside from a shattered glass ceiling, most of the damage to the concrete villa was minor.

"We wouldn't do it again," says Pritchett, who waited out July's Hurricane Emily in Eugene. "You're cold, you're wet, you're worried about things you have no control over."

The waves that crashed into stores on Cozumel's downtown waterfront washed jewelry and other merchandise into the streets and the sea. But the Mexican government put an end to the scavenging by declaring martial law. Pritchett says divers were recovering jewelry, and soldiers were preventing snorkelers from entering the water.

Overall, Pritchett says, the Mexican response to the storm was swift and efficient. Mexican Marines arrived with food and medical supplies hours after the storm. Mexicana Airlines offered free flights to Mexico City, and Carnival Cruise lines sent a ship full of supplies. The cruise company shipped passengers free of charge to Fort Lauderdale, and the government arranged for ferry rides off Cozumel.

"Mexico put the U.S. to shame," Pritchett says, referring to the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Cleanup on Cozumel began the morning after the storm and has continued almost around the clock since. The island, which is the country's most popular cruise ship port, is part of the so called Mayan Riviera. The tourism-heavy region includes Cancun and Playa del Carmen and is one of the country's richest tax bases.

Pritchett acknowledges that the government had good reason to act quickly: Of the 70,000 hotel rooms in the region, 60,000 were uninhabitable after the storm, and Mexican tourism officials have estimated the area will lose $800 million in the next three months.

The next step for Cozumel will be convincing cruise ship lines the island is "tourist ready." Crews have been bringing in sand for beaches, planting 30-foot palm trees and even bolting together sections of the island's tropical reef that were damaged.

Pritchett says the governor, Felix Gonzalez Canto, has been instrumental in speeding up the response.

"His whole family lives here, and he understands how tourism works here," she says. "If the tourists don't come back, we are all dead in the water."

CAPTION(S):

Water from backed-up storm drains and sewage systems floods the streets of Cozumel, Mexico, on Oct. 25, four days after Hurricane Wilma struck the tourist island.