Riding Out Wilma, 38 To A Room

An American tourist still stranded in Mexico described the cramped scene in an elementary school that was used as a shelter as the storm passed, ever so slowly, several days ago. He told Julie Chen that Wilma "was rippin.' "

As Hurricane Wilma pounded Mexico late last week and last weekend before heading to the United States, American tourist Scot Lyall was hunkered down in an elementary school that was used as a shelter.

Lyall, who's still stuck in the town of Playa del Carmen, was staying in the Occidental Allegro Playacar hotel. He was evacuated to the school, where he and fellow evacuees were in small rooms.

"The hotel got the word from the federal government last Thursday that any beachfront hotel had to close down, and they could not let their people stay on-site if they had any kind of that thatched roofs or anything that was possibly breakable, or if they were very close to the ocean," Lyall told The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Tuesday. "So they bused us all to a 12-room elementary school about maybe a half-mile, three-quarters-of-a-mile from the beach. And they put us 38 to a room.

"The school had no windows with glass. They were just wooden slats, which they covered up most of that with plywood. And then a wooden door. And it was an entire concrete building with a concrete roof. And that's where we slept.

"We had little tiny mats about the size of a mat you would put on a chaise lounge by the pool; one of those mats for two people. And we all sat in the room and started to wait it out.

"Around midnight on Thursday is when the actual winds began to pick up. They started fairly light at 40 or 50 miles an hour. And by Friday morning, it was rippin'. It was 150, 165 mile-an-hour winds, is what we were told. The rains came down, non-stop, from Thursday at midnight until probably Sunday at 1:00 in the afternoon."

Lyall and his fellow evacuees got by on old sandwiches from the hotel, water and potato chips.

He says the room was hot and stuffy and, despite the boarded-up windows, the rain came into the room, soaking everyone and the pallets they were sleeping on.

The tourists were brought back to the hotel Sunday, and slept in the lobby on beach chairs.

Lyall says he may get to return to the United States on Wednesday, but he can't be certain since, "Rumor control down here is a little tough. There's still no communications, not much in the way of telephone lines. Everything is done by word of mouth, somebody going up and checking things out."

One thing's for sure, he adds: "We've needed a shower for a while, I tell you."