Hurricane Ivan strengthened to a rare Category 5 storm capable of catastrophic damage, leaving Jamaica and aiming for the Cayman Islands with winds reaching 165 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Saturday.
Ivan already has killed 50 people across the Caribbean this week, including 34 in Grenada.
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A Jamaican woman carries a mattress after her house was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan, in Kingston, Jamaica.
Millions more people are in its path, with Ivan projected to go between the Cayman Islands, make a direct hit on Cuba and then either move into the Gulf of Mexico or hit South Florida.
The Hurricane Center said Ivan's intensity was measured by a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane. A Category 5 storm is the most powerful, packing winds of at least 155 mph and causes a storm surge of at least 18 feet.
If Ivan hits land in the Caribbean at its current strength, it would be the first Category 5 storm to do so there since Hurricane David devastated the Dominican Republic in 1979, said Rafael Mojica, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Center in Miami. Hurricane Mitch was a Category 5 storm in the Caribbean Sea in 1998, but it hit Central America.
Only three Category 5 storms are known to have hit the United States. The last was Hurricane Andrew, which hit South Florida in 1992, killing 43 people and causing more than $30 billion in damage.
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Jamaica, an island of 2.6 million known for its beaches, reggae music and Blue Mountain coffee, was saved from a direct hit when the hurricane unexpectedly wobbled and lurched to the west. Jamaica was ravaged by winds just below the 155-mph mark.
East of Kingston, the capital, dazed survivors stood in the rain and watched 25-foot waves crash onto beachfronts where a dozen houses used to stand at Harbour View. Associated Press reporters saw looters carrying boxes of groceries from a smashed storefront.
RJR Radio reported that a 10-year-old girl drowned in Old Harbour, just east of the capital, and a woman was killed by a tree that crashed into her Kingston home, said Ronald Jackson of Jamaica's disaster relief agency.
A man, woman and baby also drowned in Clarendon parish, just west of Kingston, police said, citing reports from residents.
At 5 p.m. EDT, the hurricane's winds were 165 mph and its well-defined eye was about 145 miles east-southeast of Grand Cayman. Hurricane-force winds extended 60 miles and tropical storm-force winds another 175 miles.
Ivan has been blamed for the deaths of 34 people in Grenada, five in Jamaica, five in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados, and four youngsters in the Dominican Republic.
Forecasters warned Ivan could strike Florida, where the Keys were mostly boarded up, deserted by evacuating residents and tourists. Ivan is approaching hard on the heals of hurricanes Charley and Frances.
The Cayman government posted a hurricane warning and urged residents to prepare for a possible direct impact. Cuba also upgraded a hurricane watch to a warning for the threatened western part of the island.
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Residents of Cojimar, Cuba, a seaside community once frequented by Ernest Hemingway, cut down trees, boarded up windows and prayed in anticipation of the storm.
"If God doesn't help us, I think this is going to be extremely tragic," said Maria del Carmen Boza, a 65-year-old retiree waiting to buy crackers and canned food at a small corner store. "All of Cuba is worried. This looks like it's going to be really dangerous."
National radio exhorted Cubans to "put into practice the solidarity that characterizes our nation" by inviting neighbors in vulnerable homes to seek shelter in more stable buildings. More than 170,000 people across the island were evacuated by Saturday morning.
With Ivan passing away from Jamaica's western edge, residents emerged to view the damage. At Caribbean Terraces, a middle-class seaside community at Jamaica's Harbour View, a foot of mud and sand caked the floors of homes that withstood the storm.
The street ran with floodwaters carrying splintered wood, cracked television sets, twisted air conditioning units and shredded clothing.
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Looters took all the electrical appliances Owen Brown had stowed on an upper story of his five-bedroom home, but they left the storm-battered red sedan in his garage.
"They left me with absolutely nothing," said Brown, 50, adding he was "shell-shocked" when he returned home after working through the night as a radio broadcaster.
Next door, Joy Powell clutched a red shower curtain as if it were a security blanket as she stood in what used to be her living room - in knee-deep, muddy water floating with debris.
"The only thing I was able to save was one shower curtain," she said. "Everything else is completely gone."
Downtown, 20-foot high trees were uprooted, some flung onto the roofs of cars and twisted metal roof panels were strewn in the streets.
"I'd say we have been spared the worst but we're not out of the woods yet," Jackson said in the morning, when sheets of rain lashed the island and winds bent palm trees to a 45-degree angle.
Officials were trying to clear the road to reach the cutoff eastern parish of St. Thomas, believed to be the hardest hit, Jackson said.
Along the road to the airport - a muddy river filled with refrigerators, downed trees, traffic lights and utility poles - a dozen police officers kneeled behind their car with assault rifles at the ready. They said they were in the middle of a shootout, but it was not clear with whom.
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Jamaica had not been hit by a major storm since Hurricane Gilbert struck in 1988, killing dozens of people and inflicted massive damages as a Category 3 storm.
In Montego Bay, disaster relief officials said it was too dangerous to assess damage Saturday morning, but dozens of people had reported roofs torn from their homes.
"Things are still flying in the air," disaster relief coordinator Faye Headley said.
Hundreds of stranded tourists were joyous at the relative reprieve given by Ivan.
"We are so lucky," said Petra Hauser, 35, of Aarau, Switzerland, who spent two days in a hotel lobby.
Ivan, the fourth major hurricane of the Atlantic season, damaged dozens of homes in Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent on Tuesday before making a direct hit on Grenada, which was left a wasteland of flattened houses.
The U.S. State Department was arranging for the evacuations of all Americans from Grenada. The first plane left for Trinidad on Saturday carrying 49 people, said Consul General Bob Fretz of the U.S. Embassy in Barbados.
East of Jamaica in impoverished Haiti, the extreme edge of Ivan's raging winds destroyed 68 homes and damaged dozens more.
Associated Press reporters Vanessa Arrington in Cojimar, Cuba; Ian James, Harold Quash and Loren Brown in Grenada, Peter Prengaman in Jamaica, Jose Monegro in Dominican Republic, Amy Bracken in Haiti and Tony Fraser in Trinidad contributed to this report. |
