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Monica Bodden was there and she has this report:..

Monica Bodden Reporting
San Pedro residents are responding to the hurricane Rina Storm threat - as many who are living on the low lying areas of the island have evacuated or are getting prepared to evacuate.

Elsa Paz - Mayor of San Pedro
"At the moment we are watching the weather, hurricane Rina and its moving west north west, and we are expecting more like tropical storms winds."

"We are saying that it is going more to the Yucatan Peninsula, from Chetumal all the way from Cancun, so we are very close to the hurricane but what we are expecting is more like tropical storm winds."

Between morning and midday, more than 334 residents were evacuated from the island. So far evacuation has been voluntary.

Elsa Paz - Mayor of San Pedro
"This morning about 6:25am we had the boats running to Belize City and we have already evacuated about 234 people at that time. At the moment I believe there is much more being evacuated, but we are trying to evacuate the people that live in the lower areas like San Mateo, San Pedrito, and San Juan - those lower areas because if we get the winds it would come from the west of the island and those are very low areas and I believe that the high tide will raised too and we are asking them that if they don't have families or friends here in the center of the San Pedro, it's better for them to evacuate the island."

The last boat from off the island today was at 5 o'clock this evening. Mayor Paz says they are expecting tropical storm winds as the storm passes near to them and will not wait until the last minute to make preparations.

Elsa Paz - Mayor of San Pedro
"We have been tuning to the Reef Radio, our local radio station here, we are informing them. Every three hours we come to the radio and try to give them information and we are asking the people of San Pedro that yes, they have to take it serious because the island is different from the main land. We have to evacuate ahead of time we cannot leave it for last minute."

Frank Panton - retired forecaster and Chairman of the information committee for NEMO says that on its present track the storm should pass fairly near to the island - which means residents should be taking serious precautions.

Frank Panton - Chairman, Information Committee NEMO
"Residents of San Pedro can expect that the storm on its present track and as we are predicting should come fairly near to the island, near enough for us to be taking serious precautions. This is why we are talking about evacuations. The storm is travelling also very slowly, so it is giving people enough time to prepare. What do we expect? Tomorrow afternoon we should begin to see our weather conditions starting to go downhill as the hurricane come nearer to us and mostly a little bit to the north and east of us."

"How near it will come? We expect maybe within a hundred or less miles from the island to the center of the hurricane itself. So with this situation and because of slight errors in our predictions, we have to take the precautions and we expect that the weather then will become cloudy to overcast, some rain will start occurring between tomorrow evening and Thursday morning and the winds will pick up. We don't expect more than tropical storm force winds, which is less than about 40 to 45 mph. These winds extend out a whole 115 miles from the center of the storm and those will impact the island. As hurricane force winds above 70 mph are not expected to impact the island at the present time and those only extend out about 15 miles from the center."

NEMO this evening announced that they suspended evacuation operations from the Cayes at 5:00 p.m today. It will resume at 6:00 am tomorrow.

According to media reports from San Pedro, 1,500 residents evacuated the island town today.