Powerful Hurricane Gustav roared toward western Cuba on Saturday with 205km/h winds on its way to the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico after a deadly pass through the Caribbean.
Gustav ripped across the Cayman Islands and closed in on Cuba’s Isle of Youth before it was set to strike the Cuban mainland later in the day as a major hurricane.
Forecasters predicted Gustav would cross the Gulf of Mexico and hit central Louisiana on Tuesday with the same force that Hurricane Katrina delivered three years ago.
The United States National Hurricane Centre said Gustav, gathering strength as it crossed the warm Caribbean, was a category-three storm on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.
Any storm with winds of at least 178km/h is ranked ”major” by the Miami-based hurricane centre
Gustav could grow to a category four, with winds of at least 210km/h, before reaching the Cuban coast, and may strengthen further on Sunday when it goes into the Gulf of Mexico, where offshore platforms produce 25% of US oil and 15% of its natural gas.
Gustav was expected to dump up to 30cm of rain as it crossed Cuba on its way to the gulf.
The storm’s centre was 85km south-east of the Isle of Youth and 295km from Cuba’s western tip, forecasters said on Saturday morning. It was moving north-northwest at 19km/h.
Thousands of people moved to shelters where Cuban officials had food ready for distribution and medical teams on alert.
In the western province of Pinar del Rio, workers rushed to move recently harvested crops of Cuba’s famous tobacco to safe places.
National flights in Cuba were cancelled ahead of the storm. In Havana, people boarded up windows while trucks with loudspeakers passed through the streets warning residents to seek protection from the storm.
The storm killed up to 77 people as it crossed the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica. No deaths had yet been reported from the Caymans, a wealthy banking centre and British territory but power was out in much of the islands.
Big storm
Gustav was an expansive storm with tropical storm-force winds extending 260km from its eye.
A tropical storm warning was posted for the western Florida Keys, where up to 8cm of rain were expected.
US emergency officials, mindful of the devastation caused by Katrina, warned that Gustav would bring a five-to-nine metre storm surge along the Gulf Coast. Evacuations had begun in parts of four states in its potential path.
”This storm has the potential for being a very dangerous storm,” said Bill Irwin, a programme director with the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Katrina was a monstrous category-five hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico before hitting the coast near New Orleans as a category-three on August 29 2005.
Its massive storm surge broke through protective levees and flooded 80% of the city. New Orleans degenerated into chaos as stranded storm victims waited days for government rescue.
About 1 500 people were killed on the US Gulf Coast and $80-billion in damages made Katrina the costliest US natural disaster.
Louisiana authorities warned residents to prepare to evacuate and arranged transportation for those without cars. Highways around New Orleans were jammed with people fleeing inland and hundreds of people lined up to board buses.
Federal officials say the levees are stronger now but still have gaps that make vulnerable some of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by Katrina’s floods.
More than 11,5-million US residents could feel the storm’s impact, the Census Bureau estimated. US President George Bush phoned the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas and pledged full federal support, the White House said.
Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed it three weeks later, also wrecked more than 100 oil platforms in the gulf, which now has about 4 000 production facilities offshore.
Energy companies evacuated offshore workers and shut production in preparation for the most serious Gulf storm since the 2005 hurricane season.
As Gustav swirled toward the gulf, forecasters kept an eye on another storm, Tropical Storm Hanna, in the Atlantic Ocean about 490km east of Grand Turk Island.
It was moving west with top sustained winds of 85km/h and could be near hurricane strength by Sunday, the hurricane centre said. A tropical storm watch was issued for the south-eastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands. – Reuters