Gustav gears up to hurricane force as it drives towards Jamaica

TROPICAL storm Gustav surged toward hurricane force last night as it drove toward Jamaica and aimed for the Cayman islands, prompting evacuations of tourists and offshore oil workers.

In its wake, impoverished Haitians scrambled for food.

Meanwhile, New Orleans kept nervous watch, three years after Katrina’s destruction.

Gustav — the cause of flooding and mudslides that killed 23 in Haiti and the Dominican Republic — was nearly stationary about 130km east of Jamaica’s low-lying capital, but it was expected to run west-southwest later in the day, very close to the shore.

Its top sustained winds were just below hurricane strength at about 70mph.

Also yesterday, tropical storm Hanna formed in the Atlantic, northeast of the northern Leeward Islands.

It was too early to predict whether Hanna will threaten the United States, but Gustav was already causing jitters from Mexico’s Cancun resort to the Florida panhandle. Gustav was projected to become a major Category 3 hurricane over warm and deep Gulf waters, sending oil prices jumping above $120 a barrel yesterday on fears of production slowdowns.

Some models showed Gustav taking a path toward Louisiana and other Gulf states devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago.

Jamaican authorities urged people in rural areas to seek shelter, but businesses remained open early yesterday in Kingston, where a steady drizzle was falling from dark clouds. Emergency officials opened shelters and sent relief supplies to flood-prone areas.

Gustav hit Haiti as a hurricane on Tuesday, causing floods and landslides that killed 15 people on Haiti’s deforested southern peninsula, where it dumped 12 inches or more of rain.

A landslide buried eight people, including a mother and six of her children, in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

Gustav’s projected track pointed directly at the Cayman Islands, where residents boarded up homes and stocked up on supplies.

Forecasters said Gustav might slip between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba on Sunday, then March toward a Tuesday collision with the US Gulf Coast — anywhere from south Texas to the Florida panhandle.

“We know it’s going to head into the Gulf. After that, we’re not sure,” said meteorologist Rebecca Waddington at the National Hurricane Centre.