Hurricane Dennis kills 10 in Cuba, 22 in Haiti
By Anthony Boadle
HAVANA (Reuters) – Hurricane Dennis roared through the
Caribbean on Friday, leaving 10 dead in Cuba and 22 in Haiti
before aiming for Havana on a course toward the U.S. Gulf of
Mexico, where oil rigs and vulnerable coastal areas were
evacuated.
The storm weakened slightly as it crossed Cuba but the U.S.
National Hurricane Center in Miami said Dennis was expected to
regain major hurricane status as it emerged over the Straits of
Florida and the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.
Cuban President Fidel Castro said Dennis had already killed
10 people as its outer bands brushed over Cuba’s southeastern
corner Thursday night. Storm fatalities are rare in Communist
Cuba where the authorities can muster all state resources to
evacuate hundreds of thousands from the path of hurricanes.
Most of the victims died in collapsed houses in two coastal
towns in Granma province, Castro said on state television. An
18-day-old baby was among those who died, he said, calling the
hurricane a “diabolical force..”
Officials said 15,400 of the adjacent towns’ 20,000 homes
were destroyed or damaged. Television images showed rows of
clapboard houses flattened by the storm.
On Friday, gusts of up to 149-mph (240 kph) caused
extensive damage in the city of Cienfuegos, where the storm
made landfall. It ripped up trees and downed electricity lines,
but no casualties were reported there, as Dennis moved on to
threaten the capital Havana, where many live in decrepit
colonial buildings.
The U.S. Hurricane Center said the eye of Dennis would head
into the eastern Gulf on Friday evening and skirt the Florida
Keys on Saturday before taking aim at the U.S. Gulf Coast.
It was the strongest Atlantic hurricane to form this early
in the season since records began in 1851. Tourists and
residents hurried to leave the fragile, low-lying Keys in long
lines that became a familiar picture in 2004 when Florida was
struck by four hurricanes in a row.
In southern Haiti, many people fled their flooded homes and
the mayor of Grand-Goave, Marie Hingreed Nelchoix, said 17
people had died in and around her city, including 15 thrown
into a swollen river when a bridge collapsed.
Four people died around the southeastern city of Jacmel,
said a civil protection official. Earlier officials had
reported that a young man was killed when a tree fell on a
house near Les Cayes.
At 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT), Dennis was located about 45 miles
east-southeast of Havana, and was moving northwestward at 14
mph (23 kph). Maximum sustained winds had decreased to near 115
mph (185 kph) with higher gusts. This makes Dennis a Category 3
hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
In the U.S. Gulf, a slew of energy companies said they were
pulling workers off oil rigs and shutting down some crude and
natural gas production.
Dennis was on a similar trajectory as last September’s
Hurricane Ivan, which caused extensive damage to pipelines and
rigs. The U.S. Gulf provides about a quarter of U.S. oil and
natural gas and the threat of Dennis has helped keep U.S. crude
futures prices near record highs above $60 a barrel.
The storm was expected to regain some strength once it
leaves the Cuban mainland and returns to open water, and U.S.
forecasters said they expected it to still be a major
hurricane, capable of causing serious damage, by the time it
reaches the U.S. Gulf Coast on Sunday or early on Monday.
U.S. authorities ordered residents to evacuate Key West and
the lower part of the Florida Keys, which are connected to the
southern tip of mainland Florida by a single highway.
NASA decided on Friday to leave space shuttle Discovery on
its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, but continued to
watch Dennis closely. A decision to roll Discovery back to its
hangar would have delayed the scheduled Wednesday launch, the
first shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster in 2003.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in
Port-au-Prince, Michael Christie and Jim Loney
in Miami, Michael Peltier in Tallahassee and Irene Klotz at
Cape Canaveral)