Hurricane Ivan smashes into Grenada

The most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean in a decade killed at least 15 people and devastated Grenada, damaging 90% of homes in the ”spice isle” and destroying a 17th-century prison that left criminals on the loose.

Some escaped convicts included politicians jailed for 20 years for killings in a 1983 left-wing palace coup that led the United States to invade.

Some looting was reported and scared American medical students were arming themselves with knives and sticks.

Hurricane Ivan appeared on course to inflict more direct hits on Jamaica, Cuba and the southern United States, the US Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

Before it slammed into Grenada on Tuesday, Ivan gave Barbados and St Vincent a pummelling, damaging hundreds of homes and cutting utilities. Thousands of people there remained without electricity and water yesterday.

In Tobago, officials reported a 32-year-old pregnant woman died on Tuesday when a 40ft palm tree fell into her home, pinning her to her bed. In Venezuela, a 32-year-old man died after battering waves engulfed a kiosk on the northern coast. A 75-year-old woman was found drowned in a canal swollen by flood waters, neighbours said after she braved the storm to search for her cat.

Details on the extent of the death and destruction in Grenada did not emerge until yesterday because the storm cut all communications with the country of 100,000 people, and halted radio transmissions on the island.

“We are terribly devastated … It’s beyond imagination,” prime minister Keith Mitchell told his people and the world from aboard a British Royal Navy vessel that rushed to the rescue.

Mitchell confirmed that the prison escapees included some of the 17 people who were jailed for life for killings during the 1983 Marxist coup, but he did not know who they were or if they included former deputy prime minister Bernard Coard.

Grenada is known as a major world producer of nutmeg and for the US invasion that followed the coup, when American officials had determined Grenada’s airport was going to become a joint Cuban-Soviet base. Cuba said it was helping build the airport for civilian use. Nineteen Americans died in the fighting.

Mitchell, whose own home was flattened by Ivan, said 90% of homes on the island were damaged and he feared the death toll would rise. He said much of the country’s agriculture had been destroyed, including the its primary export crop, nutmeg.

The storm strengthened even as it hit Grenada, becoming a Category 4, and got even stronger yesterday, packing sustained winds of 140mph with higher gusts as it headed across the Caribbean Sea and passed north of the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.

In Curacao, the government evacuated 300 residents.

High winds and heavy rains from Ivan flooded parts of Venezuela’s north coast, but no injuries or major damage were reported from the South American nation.

Ivan is expected to reach Jamaica by tomorrow morning or Saturday and then aim for Cuba, the US Hurricane Centre said.