Massive Hurricane Ivan slammed into Cuba's sparsely populated western tip with the worst of its 250kph eyewall and moved into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening US oil installations and prompting thousands of Americans to flee its catastrophic strength.
Five Florida counties urged or, in some cases, ordered residents to leave yesterday as Ivan spun out of the Caribbean, where it cut a deadly swath through Grenada, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Cuba.
Ivan, one of the fiercest storms ever recorded in the region, pounded the heartland of Cuba's famed cigar industry Monday and smashed giant waves onto Grand Cayman island. It smashed away part of a hotel on Cayman's famed Seven Mile Beach on Monday.
The storm has killed at least 68 people in seven islands or countries in the Caribbean, devastated Grenada and badly battered Jamaica's Negril resort. Millions more people are threatened.
There were no immediate reports of deaths, injuries or serious damage in Cuba.
Jose Rubiera, head of Cuba's National Meteorology Institute, announced on state television that the edge of the eye crossed the island's tip around 6:45pm on Monday. All national and international airports would be closed until today.
Monday night, there were reports of sustained 193kph winds with gusts of 230kph in Pinar del Rio city, said Dan Brown, a meteorologist at the US Hurricane Center in Miami.
Cuban President Fidel Castro reiterated he would not accept any hurricane aid from the US, saying: "We won't accept a penny from them."
The huge storm attacked two islands simultaneously on Monday: Its western fringe drenched fields in Cuba's Pinar del Rio province as waves 6m tall were slamming the sea wall at the port in George Town, Grand Cayman.
Some 1.3 million of Cuba's 11.3 million people were evacuated from the western region still recovering from Hurricane Charley. As Ivan moved in, Cuban state television reported waves up to 5m crashing onto the southern coast of the Isla de Juventud, or Isle of Youth, southwest of the main island. Ham radio operators reported downed trees and power lines, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
Cuba's tobacco crop was safe, according to top grower Alejandro Robaina. Planting season doesn't begin until next month and remnants of January's harvest are protected in curing houses.
Tobacco is the communist-run island's third-largest export, producing an average of 150 million cigars worth about US$240 million a year. Sugar, the lead export, was expected to be spared since much of the cane is grown in the east.
Oil prices shot up nearly US$1.50 a barrel on Monday as oil and natural gas producers evacuated rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell Oil said it was evacuating 750 workers.
Ivan has killed at least 15 people in Jamaica, 39 in Grenada, five in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados, four in the Dominican Republic and three in Haiti.
At 9am GMT yesterday, Ivan's eye was located by a US Air Force reconnaissance plane about 135km northwest of Cuba's western tip and 925km south-southeast of the Gulf of Mexico.
In Jamaica, stores and shelters filled with more than 15,000 people were running short of food, according to Nadene Newsome of Jamaica's emergency relief agency. Officials planned to fly food into cut-off areas by helicopter.
About 98 percent of the island was still without power and 40 roads were blocked by debris. The airport in Kingston, Jamaica's capital, reopened on Monday.
In Grenada, devastated by a direct hit last week that killed 39 people and destroyed or damaged 90 percent of homes, an Italian yachter was rescued on Monday. He had ridden out the storm and been trapped nearly a week aboard his boat, police said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS