Hurricane Ivan roiled waves two stories high and tore up power lines, trees and roofs as it grew to fearsome strength, but the eye of the storm was passing just south of Jamaica early Saturday and was unlikely to make a direct hit, meteorologists said.
The death toll elsewhere in the Caribbean rose to 37, the latest victim an 8-year-old boy who died on Friday of head injuries sustained Tuesday when the storm destroyed his home in Grenada.
Sporadic gunfire and looting was reported in violence-prone Kingston, but police could not confirm that and telephone service appeared to fail as Ivan passed.
Armed troops, on high alert and carrying assault rifles, were patrolling Kingston, which was blacked out like the rest of the island by utility officers hoping to minimize damage to plants.
Ivan's eye "wobbled toward the west for the past few hours," bringing it within 56km of Kingston but keeping it off the island, according to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
"They did get very extreme winds and there's still going to be a lot of damage, but the 250kph winds passed south of Jamaica and did not make landfall," said Jennifer Pralgo, a meteorologist at the center.
Overnight, as it threatened landfall, Ivan's winds powered up to nearly those speeds. Sustained winds at that level would make it a Category 5 storm, the most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It remained a Category 4 storm, but still could strengthen.
Jamaicans, who had resorted to prayer as the ferocious hurricane neared, could say that they have been answered.
"All of us are continuing to hope and pray that by some miracle we may at the last minute be spared the worst," Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said on Wednesday, as the destruction Ivan wrought in Grenada became known.
Pralgo said that Ivan still could return to a projected path that would take it over the smaller of the Cayman islands, across western Cuba and into the heart of southern Florida.
The Cayman government posted a hurricane warning and urged residents of all three Caymanian islands to prepare "as for direct impact."
Cuba declared a hurricane watch on Friday after its leader, Fidel Castro, warned 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 tomorrow. The wobble that saved a direct hit on Jamaica could move it west into the Gulf of Mexico.
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