[originaltext] A massive evacuation of tourists in one of the world’s largest

A massive evacuation of tourists in one of the world’s largest resorts began Sunday, with hundreds of buses dispatched to move tens of thousands of vacationers away from Hurricane Emily, heading for a direct hit on Mexico’s coast.
   The size of the task was daunting: About 500 buses were ordered to move 30,000 tourists in Cancun --part of a total of 70,000-80,000 mostly foreign visitors to be evacuated statewide to temporary shelters in ballrooms and convention centers.
   "We have very little hope that this will change course," said a grim-faced Cancun Mayor Francisco Alor. "This hurricane is coming with the same force as Gilbert," a legendary hurricane that killed 300 people in Mexico and the Caribbean in 1988.
   That was the last time Cancun faced a mass evacuation. But back then, the city and surrounding resort areas were fairly new and had only about 8,000 hotel rooms; that number has since grown to more than 50,000.
   By 8 a.m. EDT Sunday, Emily was located about 305 miles east-southeast of Cozumel, and was moving toward the island at about 20 mph, with sustained winds of nearly 150 mph. The eye of the storm was expected to make landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula late Sunday or early Monday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
   Along the narrow’ spit of land that holds most of Cancun’ s palatial hotels, workers scrambled to board up businesses and remove traffic lights along the eight-mile main strip, to keep them from becoming wind-borne projectiles when the hurricane hit.