Hurricane Ivan devastated Grenada, pummeled Barbados and other islands and set its deadly winds and rains, blamed for at least 15 fatalities, on a direct course for Jamaica, Cuba and the hurricane-weary southern US.
The most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean in 10 years damaged 90 percent of homes in the "spice isle" of Grenada and destroyed a 17th century stone prison that left criminals on the loose as looting erupted, officials said Wednesday.
Some escaped convicts included politicians jailed for 20 years for killings in a 1983 left-wing palace coup that led the US to invade.
American medical students fearful of marauders armed themselves with knives and sticks.
"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.
Before it slammed into Grenada on Tuesday, Ivan gave Barbados and St Vincent a pummeling, damaging hundreds of homes and cutting utilities.
Thousands of people remained without electricity and water on Wednesday.
In Tobago, officials reported a 32-year-old pregnant woman died when a 12m 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 Canadian woman was found drowned in a canal swollen by flood waters in Barbados. Neighbors said the Toronto native, who'd lived in Barbados for 30 years, had braved the storm to search for her cat.
Details on the extent of the death and destruction in Grenada did not emerge until Wednesday because the storm cut all communications with the country of 100,000 people, and halted radio transmissions on the island.
Mitchell confirmed that prison escapees included some of the 17 people jailed for life for killings during a 1983 Marxist coup, but he didn't 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 and a disputed number of others that the United States put at 45 Grenadians and 24 Cubans.
Mitchell, whose own home was flattened, said 90 percent of houses 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 primary nutmeg crop.
"If you see the country today, it would be a surprise to anyone that we did not have more deaths than it appears at the moment," Mitchell said.
Within hours, Grenada's Police Commissioner Roy Bedaau raised the death toll to 12, in an interview with Voice of Barbados radio, but he provided no details.
UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said virtually every major building in St George's has suffered structural damage. Grenada's once-quaint capital boasted English Georgian and French provincial buildings.
The UN is sending a disaster team, Eckhard said in New York City. The Caribbean disaster response agency, based in Barbados, said its team arrived Wednesday afternoon along with US aid and Pan American Health Organization officials.
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