Deadly Ike slams Cuba

Hurricane adds 58 to Haiti toll

September 08, 2008|Will Weissert, Associated Press

CAMAGUEY, Cuba - Hurricane Ike roared onto Cuba yesterday after destroying houses and crops on low-lying islands and worsening floods in Haiti that have already killed more than 300 people.

With Ike forecast to sweep the length of Cuba and possibly hit Havana head-on, hundreds of thousands evacuated to shelters or higher ground. To the north, residents of the Florida Keys fled up a narrow highway, fearful that the "extremely dangerous" hurricane could hit them tomorrow.

At least 58 people died as Ike's winds and rain swept Haiti yesterday - and officials found three more bodies from a previous storm - raising the nation's death toll from four tropical storms in less than a month to 319. A Dominican man was crushed by a falling tree.

Ike first slammed into the Turks and Caicos and the southernmost Bahamas islands as a Category 4 hurricane. Thousands rode out the storm in shelters and there was no immediate word of deaths on the low-lying islands.

Ike made landfall in eastern Cuba late last night, said meteorologist Todd Kimberlain at the US National Hurricane Center, and was forecast to hit Havana, the capital of 2 million people with many vulnerable old buildings, before it moves into the Gulf of Mexico early tomorrow morning.

At 11 p.m. EDT, Ike was a Category 3 hurricane with top sustained winds of 120 miles per hour. It was centered near near Cabo Lucretia, about 135 miles east of Camaguey, moving westward at 13 miles per hour.

State television broadcast images of the storm surge washing over coastal homes in the easternmost city of Bayamo and reported that dozens of dwellings were damaged beyond repair.

An informal AP tally of figures being released sporadically by eastern Cuban provinces indicated that more than 600,000 people had been evacuated by last night. Former President Fidel Castro released a written statement calling on Cubans to heed security measures to ensure no one dies.

Foreign tourists were pulled out from vulnerable beach resorts, workers rushed to protect coffee plants and other crops, and plans were under way to distribute food and cooking oil to disaster areas. "There's no fear here, but one has to be prepared. It could hit us pretty hard," said Ramon Olivera, gassing up his motorcycle in Camaguey, where municipal workers boarded up banks and restaurants before heavy rain started falling.

More than 100 people waited in chaotic bread lines at each of the numerous government bakeries around town as families hoarded supplies before the storm. And on provincial capital's outskirts, trucks and dented school buses brought about 1,000 evacuees to the sprawling campus of an art school.

Classrooms at the three-story school built on stilts were filled with metal bunk beds. The approaching hurricane brought a stiff breeze through the open windows.