One of the most powerful hurricanes of recent times rolled across the Cayman Islands on Sunday and is due to hit Cuba on Monday after causing more than 60 deaths in the Caribbean.
Ivan was producing winds of about 250km and seven-metre waves by the time it struck the Cayman Islands on Sunday afternoon, swamping the coastlines of the vulnerable British dependency and threatening the 45 000 inhabitants.
”We know there is damage and it is severe,” Wes Emanuel, a government spokesperson, told the Associated Press.
”For the last seven hours it has been like standing next to a train track with a very heavy fast freight train roaring by.”
He said reports were coming in of roofs blown off houses and extensive flooding.
Michael Whyte, a British teacher on Grand Cayman, told the BBC: ”It’s just ripping things up and throwing them away. Anything that isn’t nailed down is just flying around. A palm tree has just been bent over as if it’s a twig and there are sheets of water coming down.”
Most residents on Little Cayman were evacuated to the main island, Grand Cayman, where they were moved into shelters. On a third island, Cayman Brac, locals fled to caves traditionally used as a haven against hurricanes.
Cayman Net News, an internet newspaper, reported that at its offices in the capital, George Town, ”flood water was rising several inches above the foot of the doors and threatening to breach the integrity of the building.
”The entire office is currently at risk of being inundated with at least four to five inches of flood water.”
Donnie Ebanks, deputy chairperson of the Caymans’ national hurricane committee, estimated that between 25% and 50% of the 15 000 homes on Grand Cayman had suffered some damage.
The eye of the hurricane passed just south of Grand Cayman, Rafael Mojica, a meteorologist at the United States National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.
As it moved north-west across the Caribbean, Ivan sometimes reached category 5, the top of the scale.
On Sunday it weakened to category 4 after skirting the southern coast of Jamaica, sparing the island a direct hit.
”Whatever our religion, faith or persuasions may be, we must give thanks,” Jamaica’s prime minister, PJ Patterson, said in a radio address.
Nevertheless, the blistering winds, high seas and floods killed 11 people, Patterson said.
Many villages were cut off by flooding, making an early assessment of the damage impossible. Hospital officials reported 15 deaths.
As the clean-up operation got under way in Jamaica, almost the entire island lost its electricity and gangs of looters were reported to be roaming the streets of Kingston and Montego Bay, exchanging occasional shots with the police.
The police said they had killed two looters and four policemen had been wounded.
The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency in Barbados said aid had been sent to Grenada, but Jamaica was still experiencing tropical storms and it would be a few days before workers could provide relief.
Hurricanes are assessed by the pressure at the eye: the lower the pressure the greater its ferocity, and the pressure at Ivan’s eye was the sixth lowest ever measured in the Atlantic Basin.
In its journey from the mid-Atlantic fringes of the Caribbean, Ivan has already devastated Grenada, killing 34 and damaging more than 90% of the houses on the island, leaving 60 000 people homeless. Five people were reported dead in Venezuela and four in the Dominican Republic
The next island in its path, Cuba, ordered a mass evacuation of the south coast at the weekend, particularly the western tobacco-growing province, Pinar del Rio.
Cubans living above the fourth floor of their apartment buildings were also told to leave their homes.
About 1,3-million of the 11,2-million population had been evacuated by Sunday night.
”Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together,” President Fidel Castro declared. ”This country is prepared to face this hurricane.”
He instructed Cubans to store essential supplies and board up their windows, but Havana shops were reported to have run out of plywood and sticky tape.
Evacuation during natural disasters in Cuba is obligatory and those who fail to comply can be arrested.
The hurricane is predicted to move into the Gulf of Mexico or hit south Florida after Cuba. – Guardian Unlimited Â