Cuba on Friday braced for the arrival of an increasingly dangerous Hurricane Dennis after the storm dumped rain on Jamaica, while Florida authorities issued a state of emergency and ordered first evacuations.
The full brunt of the storm, which was upgraded to a category-four hurricane — five is the maximum — looks set to hit the central part of the island with winds in excess of 215kph and pounding rain.
About 200 000 people have been evacuated from their homes in Cuba, civil defence officials said.
Cuban President Fidel Castro went on national television to reassure the population that the country is ready to meet the challenge, but he warned that the hurricane will likely cause much damage.
”We have an important organisational and defence plan functioning like clockwork,” Castro said, adding that the goal was to ”save people, that not one life is lost”.
The centre of the powerful hurricane skirted past the eastern tip of Jamaica on Thursday afternoon, but dumped rain and flooded roads on the island as well as on parts of southern Haiti.
In Florida, Governor Jeb Bush declared a statewide emergency, and evacuations started in the Florida Keys, a highly exposed chain of islands linked to the mainland by a single road and a series of bridges.
Forecasts by the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) show the storm could eventually make landfall in north-western Florida after moving over Cuba and the Florida Keys, and crossing the Gulf of Mexico on a track that could take it over offshore oil platforms.
At 9am GMT on Friday, Dennis, the year’s first Atlantic hurricane, was located 440km south-east of Havana, and moving in a north-westerly direction at 26kph.
”On this track, the eye of Dennis will reach central Cuba later today,” the NHC said.
Cuba’s Meteorological Institute said Dennis had skirted the tip of Cabo Cruz, the south-eastern tip of the island, at midnight.
”Dangerous hurricane Dennis’s fury aims at central and western Cuba,” said the NHC, adding that the storm has intensified into an ”extremely dangerous category-four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale”.
”Some additional strengthening is possible before landfall in Cuba,” it added.
Hurricane warnings — meaning hurricane conditions can be expected within the next 24 hours — extend from Cuba’s Havana province, which includes the capital, Havana, to the lower Florida Keys.
A wide swath of Cuba and Florida has been placed under a hurricane watch, said the NHC, adding that the storm is expected to dump 13cm to 25cm of rain over Cuba, and 10cm to 20cm over extreme southern Florida.
Dennis caused extensive flooding in Jamaica on Thursday, with the National Emergency Operations Centre reporting many people trapped by floodwaters in inaccessible areas. There were no reports of deaths or widespread damage.
In Cuba, tens of thousands of people were evacuated, in many cases taking their livestock with them. More than 2 500 foreign tourists at the Cayo Largo beach resort also moved to higher ground, according to Cuban radio.
Forecasters warned that the Cayman Islands also could be affected by the hurricane.
Residents of Florida, hit by four devastating hurricanes last year, kept a weary eye on the dangerous weather system.
Bush warned that Dennis could cause a ”major disaster” and called for the evacuation of high-risk areas, saying there is ”an immediate danger to the lives and property of the residents of those communities”.
Authorities in the Florida Keys ordered the evacuation of all non-residents, and urged residents to leave the most exposed areas.
Nasa officials said the storm is not causing any immediate concerns for the planned July 13 launch of the Discovery space shuttle from the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, in north-eastern Florida.
”While it is bad news for the Gulf Coast, as far as the shuttle launch is concerned, we are pressing ahead for our July 13 launch,” said spokesperson Mike Rein.
But he added that Nasa is closely monitoring the progress of the hurricane.
Oil markets are also keeping a close eye on the storm, which could head over drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico that were evacuated before Tropical Storm Cindy made landfall on Wednesday.
Cindy slammed the US states of Mississippi and Louisiana on Wednesday, flooding streets and cutting power to about a quarter of a million people. — Sapa-AFP