Ivan Bears Down on Cayman Islands, Cuba

BULL BAY, Jamaica – Hurricane Ivan lost some strength as it bore down on the Cayman Islands and Cuba Sunday but was still capable of causing tremendous damage with winds near 155 mph.

Ivan has killed 56 people across the Caribbean so far this week, including 34 in Grenada and 11 in Jamaica.

Millions more people are in its path, with Ivan projected to go between the Cayman Islands, make a direct hit on Cuba and then either move into the Gulf of Mexico or hit South Florida.

“If God doesn’t help us, I think this is going to be extremely tragic,” said Maria del Carmen Boza, a 65-year-old resident of Cojimar, a seaside community in Cuba once frequented by Ernest Hemingway. “All of Cuba is worried. This looks like it’s going to be really dangerous.”

The storm smashed into Jamaica early Saturday with ferocious waves and wind nearing 155 mph. It strengthened to a Category 5 storm with 165 mph sustained winds later in the day but dropped back to 155 mph early Sunday, making it a Category 4 storm.

However, forecasters warned Ivan could regain strength by Monday as it moved across warm tropical seas toward Cuba.

At 5 a.m., Ivan was centered about 55 miles south-southeast of Grand Cayman and was moving west-northwest at 9 mph. It was expected to stay that course through Sunday.

Cuban President Fidel Castro said the government was doing everything it could to save lives and property.

“This country is prepared to face this hurricane,” Castro said Saturday night on state television.

Jamaica, an island of 2.6 million, was saved from a direct hit when the hurricane unexpectedly wobbled and lurched to the west.

“Whatever our religion, faith or persuasions may be, we must give thanks,” Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said in an address to the nation.

East of Kingston, the capital, dazed survivors stood in the rain and watched 25-foot waves crash onto beachfronts where a dozen houses used to stand at Harbour View. Associated Press reporters saw looters carrying boxes of groceries from a smashed storefront.

Five people drowned or were struck by trees that crashed into their homes, said Ronald Jackson of Jamaica’s disaster relief agency. Patterson said 11 people had been killed, but he did not elaborate.

Ivan also has been blamed for the deaths of five people in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados, and four children in the Dominican Republic.

Forecasters warned that Ivan could strike Florida, where buildings in the Keys were mostly boarded up, deserted by evacuating residents and tourists. Ivan is approaching hard on the heels of hurricanes Charley and Frances.

In the wealthy Cayman Islands and in Cuba, people braced for the worst.

Hundreds of Caymanians fled aboard 10 charter flights scheduled for an evacuation. On Saturday, most of the 150 residents of Little Cayman evacuated to Grand Cayman, and about 755 people on Cayman Brac – more than half the population – and more than 600 people on the main Grand Cayman island moved into shelters, officials reported.

The British territory has about 45,000 residents.

National radio exhorted Cubans to “put into practice the solidarity that characterizes our nation” by inviting neighbors in vulnerable homes to seek shelter in more stable buildings. More than 480,000 people across the island of 11.2 million were evacuated by Saturday evening, officials said.

Jamaicans largely ignored government pleas for 500,000 people to flee flood-prone areas. Only 5,000 were in shelters when Ivan stalked the southern coast, coming to within 35 miles of Kingston.

With Ivan passing away from Jamaica’s western edge, residents emerged to view the damage. At Caribbean Terraces, a middle-class seaside community at Jamaica’s Harbour View, a foot of mud and sand caked the floors of homes that withstood the storm.

The street ran with floodwaters carrying splintered wood, cracked television sets, twisted air conditioning units and shredded clothing.

Looters took all the electrical appliances Owen Brown had stowed on an upper story of his five-bedroom home, but they left the storm-battered red sedan in his garage.

“They left me with absolutely nothing,” said Brown, 50, adding he was “shell-shocked” when he returned home after working through the night as a radio broadcaster.

Next door, Joy Powell clutched a red shower curtain as if it were a security blanket as she stood in what used to be her living room – in knee-deep, muddy water floating with debris.

“The only thing I was able to save was one shower curtain,” she said. “Everything else is completely gone.”

Downtown, 20-foot high trees were uprooted, some flung onto the roofs of cars and twisted metal roof panels were strewn in the streets.

Along the road to the airport – a muddy river filled with refrigerators, downed trees, traffic lights and utility poles – a dozen police officers kneeled behind their car with assault rifles at the ready. They said they were in the middle of a shootout, but it was not clear with whom.

Jamaica had not been hit by a major storm since Hurricane Gilbert struck in 1988, killing dozens of people and inflicting massive damages as a Category 3 storm.

Ivan, the fourth major hurricane of the Atlantic season, damaged dozens of homes in Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent on Tuesday before making a direct hit on Grenada, which was left a wasteland of flattened houses.

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Associated Press reporters Vanessa Arrington in Cojimar, Cuba; Ian James, Harold Quash and Loren Brown in Grenada; Peter Prengaman in Jamaica; Jose Monegro in Dominican Republic; Amy Bracken in Haiti; and Tony Fraser in Trinidad contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical