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Ivan lashes Jamaica; Dath toll hits 37
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-11 14:11 Waves two-stories high and torrential rains
flooded eastern Jamaica and punishing winds knocked down trees and power lines
as Hurricane Ivan slammed coastal areas late Friday night, heading for a direct
hit on the island. The death toll elsewhere in the Caribbean rose to 37.
A Jamaican man
drives his bike in a flooded street in Kingston, Jamaica as Hurricane Ivan
is approaching to the country, Friday, Sept. 10, 2004. [AP]
| Ivan's winds strengthened to near 155 mph — the most
powerful Category 5 ranking — as the storm's center moved toward landfall at
around 2 a.m. (3 a.m. EDT), the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
But the hurricane was expected to spare the densely populated capital of 1
million people the brunt of its wrath.
Reports of sporadic gunfire and looting in Kingston reached the emergency
management agency, said spokeswoman Nadine Newsome, but police could not confirm
that.
Howling winds and sheets of horizontal rain crashed around the eastern end of
the blacked-out island after utility officials turned off the power to minimize
damage to plants.
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson declared a public emergency Friday afternoon
and pleaded with the half million people considered in danger — about one in
five islanders — to get to shelters. But most residents refused to leave for
fear abandoned homes would be robbed.
"I'm not saying I'm not afraid for my life but we've got to stay here and
protect our things," said Lorna Brown, 49, pointing to a stove, television,
cooking utensils and large bed crowded into a one-room concrete home on the
beach at the northwestern resort of Montego Bay.
Cuba declared a hurricane watch across the entire island Friday after its
leader, Fidel Castro, went on national television warning residents to brace
themselves. "Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together" to rebuild,
he said.
In South Florida, long lines reappeared at gas stations and shoppers swarmed
home building stores and supermarkets. Forecasters said Ivan could tear through
the Keys as early as Monday though there was still a chance the storm would
instead move out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Farther south, in areas already struck by Ivan, authorities discovered more
bodies along Venezuela's flooded coast and in devastated Grenada, where the U.S.
State Department was arranging for the evacuations of all Americans who wish to
leave the island.
"When dogs interfere with garbage bags and strew the contents all over the
place — that's what Grenada looks like," Trinidadian leader Patrick Manning said
after visiting the island.
In Jamaica, awed onlookers stood transfixed on the seaside Palisadoes Highway
near Kingston's airport as 23-foot waves crashed to shore, thrusting rocks and
dead tree branches more than 100 feet into the road.
"I've lived here all my life and I've never seen anything like this," said
businessman Chester Pinnock, huddled under an umbrella in the drenching rain,
which started here Friday morning.
"This is going to be disastrous, we could have hundreds dead. Hurricane
Gilbert was a puppy compared to this," he said. Gilbert killed dozens of
Jamaicans and devastated the island when it struck as a Category 3 storm in
1988.
Meteorologists warned that Ivan could caused "life-threatening" flash floods
and mudslides.
"What we're experiencing now is only the beginning," Jamaica's prime minister
said in an address to the nation. "Residents living near coastal areas must
evacuate before it's too late. ... I cannot stress too strongly that Ivan is a
dangerous hurricane."
But only 5,000 people moved into shelters islandwide, emergency management
director Barbara Carby said. The government had asked 500,000 to flee.
In Montego Bay, where hundreds of tourists were stranded, the Barnett River
overflowed its banks, putting some businesses on Bouge Street four feet under
water and, farther inland, flooding roads and farmlands. Drenching rain washed
away the main northern coastal road, the A1, a couple of miles outside Montego
Bay.
The British Royal Navy frigate HMS Richmond, which rushed to Grenada's rescue
Wednesday, was speeding to Jamaica along with a supply ship, Commander Mike
MacCartain told the BBC.
Jamaicans can expect to feel the effects of the punishing hurricane through
most of Saturday, said Lt. Dave Roberts, a Navy meteorologist at the U.S.
National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was projected to exit the island around
Montego Bay, pass the Cayman Islands and cross over Cuba before taking aim at
southern Florida.
At 8 p.m., Ivan was centered about 45 miles south-southeast of Kingston,
Jamaica, moving west-northwest near 11 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended 60
miles from the center and tropical-force winds another 175 miles.
East of Jamaica, in neighboring Haiti, flooding destroyed at least two houses
and damaged a dozen more, but people expressed relief they were spared further
catastrophe in a year that has already brought a bloody rebellion and deadly
floods.
"First we had a political hurricane, then an economic hurricane, and now with
the natural hurricane, we're just glad God saved us," said Jude Vante, 32, an
unemployed mason in low-lying Les Cayes, on the southern peninsula.
Ivan became the fourth major hurricane of the Atlantic Season on Sunday. It
damaged dozens of homes in Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent Tuesday before
making a direct hit on Grenada, which it left a wasteland of flattened houses,
twisted metal and splintered wood. It damaged 90 percent of homes there, tossed
sailboats to shore and set off looting among some of the 100,000 residents left
without electricity, water and telephone service.
Manning, the Trinidadian leader, said Grenada's priorities are establishing
security to end looting; recapturing prisoners; providing food, potable water,
tents, blankets, and materials to rebuild; and restoring communications and
electricity.
The American Red Cross disaster unit said Grenada's government has
temporarily closed the country to relief shipments to get the security situation
under control. The unit's director, Doug Allen, said the country needs relief by
Saturday or Sunday before the situation becomes critical.
More than 100 Caribbean soldiers from five countries arrived Thursday to help
restore order on the island of 100,000.
On Friday, Trinidadian troops armed with assault rifles patrolled the marina
and shopping area around the Carenage, and police Superintendent Edvin Martin
reported only scattered looting. As many as 75 convicts remained at large after
about 150 of the prison's 325 inmates escaped when the storm damaged the prison.
Troops from Barbados and Trinidad guarded Grenada's airport, where dozens of
American medical students waited for chartered flights home.
"Nothing is going to be functioning here for a long time," said Olivier de
Raet, 37, a medical student from Potomac, Md.
In Washington, a State Department official said all Americans on Grenada who
wish to leave the island will be flown to Trinidad starting Saturday morning
aboard chartered U.S. aircraft.
There was no official estimate on the numbers of Americans there but one
estimate said there were about 1,500, including U.S. medical students. The Peace
Corps said all 23 of its volunteers on Grenada were accounted for and safe.
At St. George's University, student leader Salman Kahn, 25, of Chicago, said
about 270 students had left on charter flights.
In the meantime, 31-year-old student Manisha Sharma of Boston was sleeping in
a tent with her landlord and their kids.
"I'm living in a tent, it's been fun," she said. "I have 15 people with me,
four kids."
Grenada's Police Commissioner Fitzroy Bedeau said efforts to determine a
death toll were hindered by blocked roads, landslides and lack of telephone
service. Hospital director Esther Henry Fleary said at least 26 people have
died, the latest an 8 year-old boy who died Friday. She said the hospital had
treated more than 500 injured people.
Ivan has also killed five people in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in
Barbados, and four youngsters in the Dominican Republic.
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