A strengthening Hurricane Gustav swept over the Cayman Islands on Friday as it headed toward Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s deadly strike on New Orleans.
The storm, which killed up to 77 people in the Caribbean, was plowing toward superheated waters south of Cuba where it could absorb enough energy to strengthen into a major hurricane before ripping through the heavy concentration of United States oil and natural gas platforms off Louisiana.
While long-range storm forecasts are prone to errors, the US National Hurricane Centre said late on Friday that Gustav could be a ”major” category-four storm on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity within 48 hours.
The storm’s most likely track has it going ashore west of New Orleans on Tuesday morning.
US emergency officials warned that Gustav was expected to be accompanied by a five-to-nine metre storm surge along the Gulf Coast, and said four states in its potential path were expected to begin large-scale evacuations on Saturday.
”This storm has the potential for being a very dangerous storm,” said Bill Irwin, a programme director with the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Oil prices slipped on Friday after a week of volatile trading due to Gustav’s threat to the 4 000 Gulf platforms that produce a quarter of US oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.
Energy companies evacuated offshore workers and shut production in preparation for the most serious Gulf storm since the devastating 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.
Gustav strengthened back into a category-one hurricane as it neared the wealthy Cayman Islands on Friday and it could grow into at least a category-three storm before reaching western Cuba on Saturday.
At 3am GMT on Saturday Gustav was 85km east of Grand Cayman Island and moving north-west at 17km/h. Top sustained winds were near 130km/h.
Katrina was a monstrous category-five hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico before coming ashore near New Orleans as a category-three on August 29 2005, breaching protective levees and flooding the city famed as the birthplace of jazz.
The devastation exposed deep poverty, racial tensions and federal incompetence as thousands of people were left stranded without aid. About 1 500 people were killed on the US Gulf Coast and $80-billion in damages made Katrina the costliest US natural disaster.
Symbolic burial
Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed it, also wrecked more than 100 oil rigs.
In New Orleans, officials paused their Gustav preparations to mark the Katrina anniversary with a symbolic burial for more than 80 victims still unidentified three years later.
Louisiana authorities warned residents to prepare to evacuate and laid on transportation for those who do not have cars. Federal officials say the levees are stronger but gaps still exist that make vulnerable some of the neighborhoods hardest hit by Katrina’s floods.
Gustav barged into Haiti as a hurricane on Tuesday and killed 59 people, and eight in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. It then weakened to a tropical storm and went over Jamaica but may still have killed as many as 10 there.
”I do not want to speculate, but I am fearful that we could be looking at a number in the region of 10 in terms of the number of people who have died,” Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding told reporters.
Floodwaters left residents stranded atop their roofs in Gordon Town near the capital, Kingston, and police enforced curfews in some north coast towns to curtail looting.
In the British territory of the Cayman Islands, which has not completely recovered from a near-direct hit by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, residents scurried to make last-minute purchases but only a few fuel stations remained open as Gustav’s rains began on Friday afternoon.
The streets of the capital, George Town, were mostly deserted, a stark contrast to the traditional weekday bustle of the financial services industry hub.
Energy traders also watched Tropical Storm Hanna, 420km north of Puerto Rico. The storm was moving west-northwest with maximum sustained winds at 85km/h and it could be near hurricane strength by Sunday. – Reuters