TECOLUTLA, Mexico — Hurricane Dean strengthened into a Category 2 storm Wednesday as it raked the Mexican mainland, battered oil platforms and forced thousands to flee as it regained some of its power from earlier in the week.
The sprawling storm's outer winds buffeted the coast of Veracruz state, and its more powerful center was expected to slam ashore later in the day. Dean's maximum sustained winds reached 100 mph, up from 90 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
Civil defense workers in yellow raincoats joined troops in rounding up Tecolutla's residents and helping them aboard army trucks for a trip to inland shelters through heavy rain.
Magdalena Gonzalez, 55, clutched a black plastic bag of belongings as she waited for the ride to a shelter, torn between fear of the storm and concern for what she leaves behind.
"I'm afraid it's going to take my house," she said.
South of Veracruz state, the storm surge flooded Ciudad del Carmen, a city of 120,000 people.
Dean had swept across the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday after making landfall as a ferocious Category 5 hurricane, toppling trees, power lines and houses — but sparing glitzy resorts on the Mayan Riviera.
Officials said they had received no reports of deaths in the Yucatan Peninsula, though driving rain, poor communications and impassable roads made it difficult to determine how isolated Mayan communities fared in the sparsely populated jungle. Earlier, Dean killed 13 people in the Caribbean.
Greatly weakened from that overland journey, Dean moved across the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico, home to more than 100 oil platforms, three major oil exporting ports and the Cantarell oil field, Mexico's most productive.
The entire field's operations were shut down just ahead of the storm, reducing daily production by 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
Seventy percent of the oil city of Ciudad del Carmen was flooded, Campeche state Gov. Jorge Carlos Hurtado told Mexico's Televisa network.
The sprawling, westward storm was projected to hit the near Laguna Verde, Mexico's only nuclear power plant, which was suspending production.
At 11 a.m. EDT, Dean was centered at 95 miles north of Veracruz and about 75 miles southeast of Tuxpan, the hurricane center said.
Torrential rains, battering waves and a storm surge of six to eight feet above normal were forecast. Dean was moving northwest at 18 mph, but was not expected to intensify much more before making landfall, the center said.
The last tourists departed Tuesday from the beaches of Tecolutla, while residents boarded up doors and windows on hotels facing the beach.
Dean became the third most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in recorded history when it plowed into the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday.
"It wasn't minutes of terror. It was hours," said Catharine Morales, 30, a native of Montreal, Canada, who has lived in Majahual for a year. "The walls felt like they were going to explode."
Morales weathered the storm in her new brick-walled house with her husband and 7-month-old daughter, Luna. Dean blew out the windows and pulled pieces from their roof.
But they fared better than most: Hundreds of homes in the Caribbean town of Majahual collapsed as Dean crumpled steel girders, splintered wooden structures and washed away about half of the immense concrete dock that transformed the sleepy fishing village into Mexico's second-busiest cruise ship destination.
The storm surge covered almost the entire town in waist-deep sea water, said fishermen Jorge Gonzalez, 29. He found refuge in the back room of a beachfront store whose steel security curtains were blown out, and had to help his dog Camilo keep his head above the rising tide.
"There came a moment when I thought this was the end," Gonzalez said.
Hurricane-force winds could strike as far north to La Cruz, about 200 miles south of Texas, the hurricane center said.
Dean's projected path is 400 miles south of Texas, where only heavy surf was expected. The space shuttle Endeavour landed Tuesday — a day early — because of the threat NASA once feared Dean would pose to Mission Control in Houston.
Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson in Majahual, John Pain in Miami, and Lisa J. Adams in Mexico City contributed to this report.