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Chicago-Area Residents Hunker Down In Hurricane Zone

(CBS) -- Most hotel guests are being taken to shelters as Hurricane Patricia closes in.

Still, CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez found a couple of folks from Illinois who plan to ride it out.

J.R. Robinson, originally from Plano, described an eerie calm ahead of the storm.

"No birds in the air, no noise, not even an inkling of a breeze," he says.

The part-time resident of Puerto Vallarta says he plans to hunker down from his third-floor condo.

"Everybody's done their due diligence," he says. "Everybody's being smart."

Windows are taped and boarded up. And tens of thousands of people have left town, including hotel guests who are being taken to shelters and told they're now refugees.

"Optimistically, the worst case scenario is that we're here for a few days and we're just inconvenienced and get home eventually," Chicagoan Dan Michel says.

Michel says everyone is now staying put, after they were told they'd be sent to shelters.

"They put mattresses on the windows," Michel says.

Michel hopes to keep a Sunday flight reservation to get home.

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