Ivan now a category 5 storm; Florida at risk, Keys orders evacuation

Ivan kills 12, damages homes in Grenada

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada - (AP) -- Hurricane Ivan killed at least 12 people in Grenada, damaged nearly all its homes and destroyed a prison, leaving criminals on the loose, officials said.

Details on the extent of destruction in Grenada did not come through until Wednesday because the storm cut communications with the country of 100,000 people.

''If you see the country today, it would be a surprise to anyone that we did not have more deaths than it appears at the moment,'' Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said.

Mitchell confirmed that the escapees included some of the 17 jailed for life for killings during a Marxist palace coup in 1983 but didn't know which ones.

Mitchell said 90 percent of homes were damaged and he feared the death toll would rise. He said much of the country's agriculture had been destroyed, including its primary export crop, nutmeg.

By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada - Hurricane Ivan took aim Thursday at Jamaica and possibly Florida after killing 23 people in five countries and devastating Grenada, where police fired tear gas to stop a looting frenzy and frightened students armed themselves with knives and sticks.

Ivan, the deadliest hurricane to hit the Caribbean in a decade, pummeled Grenada, Barbados and other southern islands on Tuesday. On Thursday, it strengthened into a Category 5 storm — the most powerful, with 160 mph winds — and was expected to hit Jamaica, where officials urged a half million people to evacuate coastal and flood-prone areas, on Friday.

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical

Flight From Keys Begins as Storm Hits Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sept. 10 - Hurricane Ivan lashed Jamaica on Friday with powerful winds and driving rains, knocking down power lines and trees and ripping off tin roofs, as officials in Florida stepped up their efforts to evacuate the Florida Keys.

"Ivan is definitely here," Evan Thompson, a division chief at the national meteorological service in Kingston said an interview with Radio Jamaica. "We are definitely in the midst of a hurricane."

At 11 p.m., the eye of the hurricane was 35 miles south of Kingston and maximum sustained winds had increased to almost 155 miles per hour, with higher gusts, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported. The center described it as "an extremely dangerous hurricane" that was approaching Category 5 strength, a storm with winds greater than 155 m.p.h.

As heavy rain blanketed Kingston, the capital, gunshots were heard and there were unconfirmed reports of looting. In the resort town of Montego Bay, the police said they had arrested several people for looting. In the hills above Kingston, the downpour touched off mudslides that blocked roads.

Barbara Carby, director general of the country's Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told Radio Jamaica her agency had received "many, many calls" from people who had lost roofs. Her advice: "Get in a closet or the bathtub and pull mattresses over you."

Following on the heels of Hurricanes Charley and Frances, Hurricane Ivan is the third powerful storm to plow through the Caribbean and southern Atlantic in the past four weeks. Already, weary and frustrated residents of Florida were bracing for yet another hit even as they continued to try to restore power and clean up damage from last week's storm, while residents and tourists in Jamaica were praying that Hurricane Ivan's powerful winds would not damage that island the way it did Grenada earlier in the week.

In Cuba, President Fidel Castro declared an islandwide hurricane watch. In Kingston, the streets were empty as night fell except for a few cars scurrying for cover past boarded and taped storefronts and homes.

At the request of Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, a state of emergency went into effect expanding police powers.

In Kingston and other towns and cities earlier, the authorities said they were having difficulty persuading residents in low-lying areas to leave their homes for shelter.

But in Montego Bay and other resort towns on the north coast, about 15,000 stranded tourists from the United States and other countries gladly agreed to move from waterfront hotels to heavily fortified concrete and steel resorts inland.

As the storm intensified, hotels around the country ordered guests from their rooms, many of them with floor to ceiling glass walls, and herded them into the safety of central ballrooms and dining areas.

"I think this is going to be a bad one," said Butch Stewart, chairman of Sandals Resorts, the largest hotel group in Jamaica, and chairman of Air Jamaica, the national flag airline.

Mr. Stewart, reached by telephone in Miami, had gone there after starting repairs to his hotels in the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas that were damaged by Hurricane Charley last week. While Jamaica and Florida braced for Hurricane Ivan, rescue workers continued to try to get into Grenada, the tiny island in the southern Caribbean where more than 20 people died earlier this week as the stormed wrecked hundreds of homes and businesses.

A State Department official said Friday evening that by midmorning Saturday, planes would begin airlifting American citizens out of the devastated island to Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. Roughly 1,500 Americans were on the island when Hurricane Ivan hit, the official said.

About one-third of those were medical students studying at the American medical college in Grenada, St. George's University School of Medicine, said Jerry Cammarata, a doctor at Coney Island Hospital who has been in touch with the students' families. In Florida, the highway out of the Keys was clogged with residents in cars and trucks heading north out of harm's way. In Miami and other cities, people were rushing around to grocery and hardware stores to restock on water, canned food and batteries for flashlights and portable radios. Long lines formed at gasoline stations as drivers topped off their tanks.

Ken Seiffer, 42, from Key West, was at a gas station in Marathon on Friday afternoon, waiting to get gas with his wife and two children. "We're leaving, heading up toward Orlando where we have family," he said. "We've boarded up and secured everything so now it's time to go ahead and evacuate."

Two of the three hospitals in the Keys were being evacuated, the Lower Keys Medical Center in Key West and the Fishermen's Hospital in Marathon. In Montego Bay, Horace Peterkin, manager of Sandals Montego Bay and a vice president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourism Association, was getting the last of his guests out of his beachfront resort and keeping an eye on developments around the country.

He said he understood the government was preparing to forcibly evacuate some residents in dangerous areas. "A lot of people are still clinging to their houses and possessions," Mr. Peterkin said.

One reason people were unwilling to leave their homes, he said, was memories of looting during and after Hurricane Gilbert, the last powerful storm to hit Jamaica, 16 years ago.

The mood of Jamaica, he said, has shifted from widespread denial, based on 50 years of watching all but two big hurricanes skirt the island at what seemed to be the last minute, to very serious concern.

"Everybody is very, very nervous," Mr. Peterkin said. Early this afternoon, Tameka Cato, 17, was walking as fast as she could toward safety in her family's church, the nearby Kingdom Hall of Jehovahs Witness, with two younger brothers and her 7-year-old sister, Sangean, trying to keep up. Their parents planned to join them later.

Sangean in blue jeans and powder blue shirt was hefting a pink backpack stuffed with clothing and the others carried sacks of water and food along the deserted street. Nearly every business was shuttered in Kingston. But the tiny, gritty L & K Restaurant & Bar on Half Way Tree Road was open and so was Taylor's Funeral Home on East Street.

Elvis Gayle, one of the undertakers at the funeral home, said he had come in to help Ken Anderson, the caretaker, take down a sign that the wind might have blown away. They were determined to maintain the funeral home policy of being available to bereaved families 24 hours a day, every day, clear skies or not.

"Probably nobody is going to come out during the hurricane," Mr. Anderson said. "But we're staying open just in case."

Keith Sturridge, the burly owner of the bar, said he figured his business, with its concrete block structure and steel security bars on the windows, was a safer bet for riding out Hurricane Ivan than his 70-year-old home. He said he figured if he was going to be in the bar, he might as well be ready for business.

The counter stools and all the booths were empty in midafternoon as a light rain washed the front of the building. But Andre Jones, 30, a construction worker, and two other men were staying dry, just under the eaves of the bar's roof.

They laughed at the thought that like hundreds of thousands of evacuating Floridians, they might try to get out of the path of the storm. People could get away from the beaches in Jamaica to places like the restaurant , they said. But after that, there was no place to go on an island that was 150 miles long and 50 miles wide.

None of them had the money for a flight to Florida and the thought of that made them chuckle, too. "Florida is all mashed up and it's going to get hit again," Mr. Jones said. "What good is it going to do you to go there?"

Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami for this article, and Perry Athanason from Marathon, Fla.

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica : Walls of waves crashed into seaside towns as deadly Hurricane Ivan lashed Jamaica with winds of 240 kilometers (150 miles) per hour and threatened to grow stronger, with millions more people in its projected path.

"Rainfall amounts of eight to 12 inches, possibly causing life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, can be expected along the path of Ivan," it noted.

Ivan was pointed next at Cuba and the Florida Keys, the southern string of causeway-linked islands where mandatory evacuation was ordered, affecting some 80,000 people.

"Storm surge flooding of five to eight feet (1.5 to 2.4 meters) above normal tide levels, along with large and dangerous battering waves, are occurring primarily along the south coast of Jamaica," the US center added.

Jamaican authorities pleaded for 500,000 people to leave coastal areas most at risk from the massive storm, which has already killed 17 in Grenada, five in Venezuela, four in the Dominican Republic and one in Tobago.

The tiny spice island of Grenada, population 100,000, suffered catastrophic damage in the storm, according to Prime Minister Keith Mitchell.

The storm, the worst to hit the region in decades, has already killed at least 27 people in Grenada, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Tobago, and triggered panic buying and mass evacuations in parts of Cuba and Florida.

Seven-meter (23-foot) waves slammed the coastline of this mountainous, verdant Caribbean island nation of 2.7 million, where a state of emergency was declared at midday Friday.

Electricity was shut down across the island to protect the power grid, and rivers overflowed, sweeping away homes and flooding neighborhoods, with waist-high waters roiling with tree branches, boulders and debris. There were reports of scattered looting in Jamaica's crime-plagued capital, Kingston.

"There is widespread damage across Jamaica, roofs lifting everywhere and suburban residences around Kingston have been deeply affected, there is structural damage, ... power lines, live wires on the ground," O'Neil Hamilton, a Jamaican government spokesman in Washington, told AFP.

"Damage continues and it has been that way for the past 11 hours" and will continue given Ivan's slow forward motion, Hamilton said, noting there were no early reports of casualties.

He noted there were problems calling in to Jamaica, but "cell service is working still and land lines are working and people are calling out."

At 1200 GMT, Ivan's eye was located near just south of the western tip of Jamaica, or about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Montego Bay, hub of the island's critical tourist industry, the US National Hurricane Center reported.

The storm was churning west-northwest at about eight miles (13 kilometers) per hour, with 150-mile-per-hour (240-kilometer-per-hour) winds, and should move near the Cayman Islands in about 24 hours, the US center said.

Already a strong Category Four system out of a maximum of five, "some fluctuations in strength are expected but Ivan could become stronger during the next 24 hours," the center warned.

Up to 90 percent of buildings on the island were damaged, crops were destroyed and tourist resorts were in ruins. Looting and sporadic violence followed in the wake of the storm, prompting the United States to organize an evacuation of some 1,500 of its citizens living there.

About 60,000 people are believed to be homeless, with 5,000 to 8,000 people staying in 47 emergency shelters, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Relief Agency (CDERA) reported in Barbados.

"The Caribbean Disaster Relief Unit is now operational at both the air and sea ports and responsible for managing all incoming relief supplies" for Grenada, CDERA said.

In Cuba, where Ivan was due to hit Sunday, more than 40,000 of the island's 11 million people had been evacuated. The armed forces were ordered to prepare air raid shelters to operate as hurricane shelters.

Cuba's preparations come nearly one month after Hurricane Charley left five people dead there and an estimated one billion dollars in damage.

Forecasts showed the powerful hurricane could slam into Key West, Florida, the westernmost tip of the US archipelago, on Monday.

Thousands of cars, many towing boats, clogged the only road from the keys to the mainland late Friday.

"You can't take a chance," said Fernando Reyes, 37, as he finished packing his car in Key Largo for the trip north. "This one looks like it's going to hit and hit bad."

- AFP

Ivan rips through Cayman Islands

Category 4 storm predicted to hit western Cuba on Monday

Sunday, September 12, 2004 Posted: 4:21 PM EDT

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Ivan, blamed for at least 41 deaths in the Caribbean, pounded the Cayman Islands on Sunday, following a track toward the western tip of Cuba.

Communications with Grand Cayman were hampered by widespread power outages, but officials reported horizontal rain and major flooding over the island.

"Reports from ham radio operators and the Cayman Meteorological Service indicate that power is out throughout the island," said the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"Numerous buildings have lost their roofs. Water up to two feet deep covers the airport runway, and water as high as five feet is flowing through many homes."

With low-lying areas evacuated, many of the Cayman Islands' 45,000 residents hunkered down in shelters built to withstand strong hurricanes.

All but a few tourists left the island ahead of the storm, government spokeswoman Patricia Ebanks said.

All 100 residents of the smallest of the Caymans -- Little Cayman -- flew to Grand Cayman, 90 miles away.

Many of the 2,000 residents of Cayman Brac -- the second-smallest island -- were also in shelters on Grand Cayman, Ebanks said. Yet after the evacuations, the storm's path shifted westward, veering away from the smaller islands and more directly toward Grand Cayman.

Ivan strengthened to a Category 5 storm late Saturday, with winds topping 165 mph (264 kph) but weakened overnight to Category 4, with maximum sustained winds near 150 mph (240 kph).

Forecasters said it could regain Category 5 strength Sunday on its approach to Cuba.

At 2 p.m. ET, Ivan was moving west-northwest near 10 mph (17 kph), according to the center. Its eye was about 60 miles (95 kilometers) west of Grand Cayman.

Forecasters modified Ivan's predicted path again Sunday morning, saying it has not made as much of a northwesterly turn as expected.

The updated forecast put the storm farther west of Havana, Cuba, and well clear of south Florida and the Keys.

A chart of the storm's most likely path showed it passing over the western end of Cuba on Monday, heading into the Gulf of Mexico and hitting the northwest Florida Panhandle midday Wednesday, the hurricane center said.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ordered the Florida Keys evacuated days ago, when forecasters were predicting the storm was headed in that direction.

Many of the people who live in the Keys have left, driving on U.S. 1 -- the only highway leading out of the island chain, Bush said.

A tropical storm watch was in effect for the Florida Keys from the Seven-Mile Bridge westward to the Dry Tortugas, the center said.

Ivan has been blamed for at least 41 deaths as it passed east to west through the Caribbean during the past week: 16 in Jamaica, 17 in Grenada, four in Venezuela and four in the Dominican Republic, according to officials from those countries.

Eight people drowned in the southern Jamaica town of Portland Cottage when a tidal surge pushed a wall of water into their coastal neighborhood, according to Jamaica's Office of Disaster Preparedness. Another eight people died in other areas on the southern side of the island, disaster officials said.

Cubans expressed anxiety about the potential destruction predicted to hit their island Monday afternoon or evening.

A hurricane warning was in effect for Cuba from Pinar del Rio to Ciego de Avila, including the Isle of Youth. A hurricane watch remained in effect for the rest of Cuba.

Cuban President Fidel Castro went on television Saturday to warn residents to stock up on supplies and board up their homes.

"Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together," he said.

Castro was quick to turn down any offer of relief that might come from the United States.

"From beforehand, I am saying we will not accept any help from those who have applied economic measures against our country," he said. "Save the hypocrisy of offering aid to Cuba."

Even with storm's center predicted to pass west of Havana, the Cuban capital was still in danger's way.

Many of Havana's 2.5 million residents live in dilapidated housing that has been poorly maintained for the past 45 years.

The government ordered everyone living above the fourth floor of any building to move to a lower level. Old and fragile buildings in Cuba have collapsed during thunderstorms.

Cubans usually take warnings to seek safer shelter seriously.

Without hardware stores in each community, Cubans are unable to board up their windows with plywood. Even tape is hard to find.

Last Updated: September 13, 2004 15:15 EDT

Western Cuba endures Ivan's fury

Ivan could sink New Orleans
From Doug Simpson in New Orleans
September 14, 2004

MORE than 1.2 million people in metropolitan New Orleans have been warned to get out amid threats Hurricane Ivan could submerge the Big Easy.

The 225km/h tempest continues to churn towards the Gulf Coast of the US, with weather watchers fearing it could be the most disastrous storm to hit the nation in nearly 40 years.

Residents streamed inland in bumper-to-bumper traffic in an agonisingly slow exodus amid dire warnings that Ivan could overwhelm New Orleans with up to six metres of filthy, polluted water.

About three-quarters of a million more people along the coast in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama also were told to evacuate.

Forecasters said Ivan, blamed for at least 68 deaths in the Caribbean, could reach 257km/h and strengthen to category 5, the highest level, by the time it blows ashore. That could be as early as tomorrow.

"Hopefully the house will still be here when we get back," said Tara Chandra, a doctor at Tulane University in New Orleans who packed his car up with possession, moved plants indoors and tried to book a Houston hotel room.