Jamaica awaits Ivan's 150mph knock-out punch

Hurricane Ivan’s deadly winds and monstrous waves bore down on Jamaica tonight as more than half a million people to flee from its path.

The most destructive of four hurricanes this season was due to slam into the densely populated capital of Kingston then leave the Caribbean island via the tourism centre of Montego Bay.

In its wake, it left the spice island of Grenada a wasteland of flattened houses, twisted metal and splintered wood.

The death toll rose to more than 30, including two foreign yachtsman, and was expected to rise.

Ivan, 150 mph hurricane, could strengthen before striking Jamaica – narrow 145-mile-long island of more then 2.5 million people.

The hurricane’s advance guard was kicking up heavy rain and winds off Jamaica’s eastern tip and as far away as Montego Bay, forcing authorities to close the airport and leaving hundreds of tourists stranded.

Armed private guards began patrolling against looters in Montego Bay where driving rains flooded roads with up to a foot of water. A large storm surge also flooded roads in eastern Jamaica.

The onslaught was expected to impede the evacuation – of one in five Jamaicans, some of whom were refusing to abandon their homes.

There were reports that Jamaican meteorologists were on a pay strike today.

In neighbouring Haiti, the storm’s leading edge forced piles of sand and water up to knee-high in Les Cayes, a city of 300,000 on the south-west peninsula. Hundreds of residents sheltered in schools and churches.

The Royal Navy’s Caribbean guardship, the frigate Richmond, was ordered to steam to Jamaica from Grenada where its crew had been helping the island’s 100,000 population recover from Ivan’s knock-out punch.

The hurricane devastated Grenada on Tuesday tearing apart buildings and troops from other Caribbean countries had to be sent there to help stop widespread looting

US officials ordered people to evacuate from the Florida Keys after forecasters said the hurricaner could hit the island chain by Sunday after passing the Cayman Islands and crossing Cuba.

Ivan, already the fiercest hurricane to hit Caribbean islands in a decade, unleashed violent winds, downpours and waves across a wide area.

It killed 13 people in Grenada, one in Tobago, four in Venezuela, one Canadian woman in Barbados, and four youngsters in the Dominican Republic swept away by a giant wave even though Ivan was nearly 200 miles away.

Grenada’s Police Commissioner Fitzroy Bedeau said at least 22 people had died on the island including two drowned foreign yachtsmen, whose nationalities he did not know.

In Cuba, President Fidel Castro warned residents to brace for the storm.

“Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together” to rebuild, he said on television , making clear his government would stick with its position of not accepting humanitarian aid from the US government.