Cuba braces itself for Ivan

A strengthened Hurricane Ivan headed towards Cuba’s tobacco growing north west corner, with winds reaching 195 mph tonight, after ravaging the Cayman Islands.

The slow-moving, extremely dangerous Category 5 storm, one of the strongest on record to hit the region, killed at least 68 people across the Caribbean before reaching the Caymans, and threatens millions more in its projected path.

Parts of low-lying Grand Cayman, the largest island in the British territory of 45,000 people, were swamped under up to eight feet of water today and residents stood on rooftops of flooded homes.

A car floated by the second story of one building, and a resident called Radio Cayman to report seeing two bodies floating off the beach.

Ivan intensified overnight, with maximum sustained winds at 160 mph and gusts up to 195 mph, and headed for western Cuba, threatening floods in Pinar del Rio province, the centre of tobacco growing and the biggest source for the island’s famed cigar industry.

About 1.3 million Cubans were evacuated from their homes, most taking refuge in the sturdier houses of relatives, co-workers or neighbours.

Ivan – at Category 5, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale and capable of catastrophic damage – was projected to pass near or over Cuba’s western end tonight on a path toward the US gulf coast.

Although Cubans were relieved by reports that the hurricane would not make a direct hit, Havana’s head meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, said Ivan was still threatening western parts of the island with strong winds and torrential rains. “No one should think that it is gone, that we are safe – that is not true,” he said.

Ivan was expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, nearing parts of Florida’s west coast still recovering from Hurricane Charley and threatening to make landfall in the Florida panhandle, Mississippi or Louisiana. Mexico’s north-eastern Yucatan peninsula also was on alert.

“Right now, we’re looking anywhere from the Florida panhandle to Louisiana,” Jennifer Pralgo, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Centre, said. “We do feel that the southern portion of Florida will be in the clear on this.”

Ivan killed at least 15 people in Jamaica, 39 in Grenada, five in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados and four children in the Dominican Republic. Officials in Haiti said the storm killed three people there on Saturday.

Oil platforms in the eastern and central Gulf of Mexico were being evacuated, and expectations of a disruption in gulf production pushed up oil prices more than one US dollar a barrel.

In Jamaica, shelters jammed with more than 11,000 people were running short of food today and officials said they planned to fly in supplies to isolated districts by helicopter. Dozens of roads were blocked by debris from the storm Saturday.

Although Ivan’s centre did not directly make landfall in the Caymans’ three-island chain, the storm lashed the wealthy British territory all day Sunday with 150 mph winds, and the rains kept coming through the night.

“It’s as bad as it can possibly get,” Justin Uzzell, 35, said by from his fifth-floor refuge in an office building on Grand Cayman. “It’s a horizontal blizzard. The air is just foam.”

An estimated one-quarter to one-half of the 15,000 homes on the island suffered some damage said Donnie Ebanks, deputy chairman of its National Hurricane Committee.

“We know there is damage and it is severe,” said Wes Emanuel of the Cayman Islands’ Government Information Service.

A patchy mobile phone service was restored as dawn broke in the Caymans, a popular scuba diving destination and banking centre.

The airport runway was flooded and windows shattered in the control tower, Ebanks said. The winds uprooted trees as tall as three stories.

Mexico issued a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning for the north-eastern Yucatan, and hundreds abandoned fishing settlements on the nearby island of Holbox. The resort city of Cancun opened shelters and closed beaches and hotel owners boarded over windows. The tourist island of Cozumel shut down its airport and halted the arrival of cruise ships.

While projections had the storm bypassing the Florida Keys, officials kept an evacuation order in place for the island chain’s 79,000 residents.