Seattle-area honeymooners trapped in Mexico by hurricane

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico – A Seattle-area couple expecting their first child had just arrived in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to celebrate their honeymoon when Hurricane Odile struck, wreaking havoc on the resort area and their vacation, their family said.

Stephen Hess and his newlywed wife, Julie, of Des Moines landed Saturday night at Los Cabos International Airport and arrived at the Cabo Villas Beach resort, where they planned to stay for a week. But only a day into their romantic trip, the storm battered the coast, and Stephen’s parents hadn’t been able to reach their son until Monday.

“I feel very relieved, and my wife, of course, is so emotional,” Stephen’s father, Siegfried, said in an interview with ABC News. “Having heard his voice and talked to him. … Of course, you can only talk for 10 seconds and the line shuts off.”

The hurricane damaged phone lines and cellphone service is spotty. Odile, a Category 3 hurricane, slammed the southern Baja California peninsula overnight, flipping cars, downing trees and breaking windows.

Stephen and Julie Hess married last weekend and this trip is Stephen’s first time out of the country, his sister said. Their daughter is due in November.

“Their life changed in a matter of seconds,” said Stephen’s mother Marjorie in an interview with KOMO News. “They were in bed, in the dark, listening to glass breaking. … They were just holding each other and praying.”

(KOMO News reporter Carleen Johnson’s entire interview with Marjorie Hess can be heard at the “listen” link above.)

Seigfried said he and his wife are glad the couple is safe, but furious that they were put in danger in the first place. The airlines shouldn’t have let people land in Mexico if they knew a storm was coming, Hess said.

“I’m not a storm-tracker. I depend on airlines or the resorts or somebody to contact us and let us know that something of this magnitude is on its way to Cabo,” he said. “They put my family in the eye of the storm.”

Many vacations were ruined when Odile struck the Mexican coast, forcing travelers to hunker down on air mattresses or cots in shelters and designated safe areas of hotels.

Los Cabos International Airport was damaged by the storm. Mexican television showed the terminal full of debris.

Emergency officials in Baja California reported that 135 people were treated for minor injuries from flying glass or falling objects, but there were no serious injuries or deaths so far. About 30,000 tourists were in temporary shelters.

The hurricane toppled trees and road signs along the main highway, which at one point was flooded by rushing waters. Windows were blown out of high-end hotel rooms and resort facades crumbled to the ground.

Most of the area’s power poles were blown over, leaving 239,000 people in the state of Baja California Sur without electricity, said Luis Felipe Puente, national coordinator for Civil Protection.

Many homes and businesses were reduced to shells with only the core structure intact. The walls of an OfficeMax collapsed into the parking lot. A convenience store was torn apart with the contents of its shelves dumped to the ground, and some locals helped themselves to food, water and other goods.

Farther south in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Polo formed off southern Mexico early Tuesday. It was located about 285 miles (460 kilometers) south of Acapulco, and had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. Polo was moving northwest at 12 mph. The hurricane center predicted that Polo could become a hurricane later in the week, and it could follow a track similar to Odile’s.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.