JAMAICA: Heavy rain and winds began to lash Jamaica yesterday as Hurricane Ivan roared closer, after ravaging Grenada and killing 27 people on a track that could make it the third big storm in a month to hit Florida.
Half-a-million Jamaicans were urged to evacuate low-lying areas, including around the capital, Kingston.
In the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British territory to the west of Jamaica, authorities told coastline dwellers to flee battering waves and a giant storm surge.
In the Florida Keys, tourists streamed out of the 160km-long island chain in long traffic lines as Floridians, already doused and bruised by Hurricane Charley and Hurricane Frances in the past four weeks, wearily prepared for a possible third big strike in an unusually busy Atlantic storm season.
"If Ivan stays on its present track, we will see monumental flooding," said a Florida state meteorologist, Mr Ben Nelson.
In the immediate path of the storm, which at one point became a rare top-level Category 5 hurricane with catastrophic winds of 160 m.p.h., Jamaica's 2.7 million people were scrambling to protect their homes and stock up on supplies before it made landfall last night.
Very few Jamaicans were on the streets, and all businesses in Kingston were closed. Fishermen tied boats to trees, and Washington urged US tourists to get out while they could. Ravines running through the city began flooding.
By 1800 GMT Ivan's centre was about 140 km south-southeast of Kingston at latitude 16.8 north and longitude 75.8 west, the US Hurricane Centre said.
It was moving west-north-west at 12 m.p.h. and its winds had weakened a little to 145 m.p.h.
But forecasters warned it remained a dangerous Category 4 hurricane on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale used to measure hurricane intensity and could pick up strength again.
Ivan killed at least 27 people as it roared through the Caribbean, most of them on the devastated spice island of Grenada, which officials said remained without power or water and under a dusk-to-dawn curfew after widespread looting.
Security forces from Grenada and from other Caribbean countries secured buildings in the capital, St George's, while residents roamed the streets on foot or in cars with smashed windshields looking for scarce water, food and petrol.
Authorities said 90 per cent of homes were damaged when Ivan struck Grenada on Tuesday, and they issued an urgent international appeal for tents, tarpaulins, cots, blankets and building supplies to shelter 60,000 of the volcanic island's 90,000 people.
In addition to 17 deaths in Grenada and one in Jamaica, four people died in Venezuela, four in the Dominican Republic and one in Tobago, when the storm's outreaches sent huge waves crashing down on shores or its rains provoked flash floods.
The hurricane is expected to cause storm-surge flooding of up to 2.4 metres, with rainfall of up to 25 cm as it passes over Jamaica.
In the Cayman Islands, a major offshore financial centre, most businesses, including all banks, and schools were closed to allow residents time to prepare for the storm.
Several apartment complexes on the north-west shoreline of Grand Cayman island ordered residents to evacuate, and airlines took more than 2,000 people out of the country on Thursday.
While most people were leaving Grand Cayman, Ms Daria Benham of Boston was at the airport to meet her arriving husband. The couple purchased an apartment on the island three weeks ago. "Now we have to decide to stay or to go," she said.
The hurricane centre's long-range forecast, which is subject to change, had Ivan reaching Cuba, the largest Caribbean island nation, by Sunday, and Florida on Monday.
Tourists fled the Florida Keys while the 80,000 residents of the island chain also started to evacuate as Florida faced the third hurricane in a month, following Charley and Frances.
Charley killed more than 20 people and caused insured damage of around $7.4 billion after coming ashore in south-west Florida on August 13th. Frances, a less powerful but much bigger storm, killed 19 people and caused damages of $2 billion to $4 billion after pounding Florida's Atlantic coast last weekend.
Almost 800,000 homes and businesses in Florida, or just over 1.5 million people, remained without power yesterday.- (Reuters)