Hurricane Dennis flooded roads in Haiti and threatened a direct hit on Jamaica, pushing oil prices sharply higher and becoming the second storm to threaten petroleum output in the Gulf of Mexico.
A hurricane warning was posted for eastern Cuba including the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where some 520 terror suspects are detained. Forecasters also warned Dennis was on track for the Alabama-Florida coastline.
Some rural Jamaicans were cut off by floodwaters hours before the storm was to pass, and authorities planned to fly over the affected southeast area in a helicopter to search for stranded islanders.
Rain lashed Jamaica's capital, Kingston, flooding the two-lane highway connecting the city to its international airport, which was closed down.
Coming right behind Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall late Tuesday in Louisiana and caused refinery outages, uncertainty over a more menacing Dennis lifted oil prices to record highs over US$60 a barrel on both sides of the Atlantic on Wednesday.
Dennis, the fourth storm of the Atlantic season, became the first hurricane when it strengthened to a Category 1 storm Wednesday packing winds near 130kph.
It is threatening to hit Jamaica as a Category 2, with winds above 154kph, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
Dennis could dump up to 30.5cm of rain over high land including Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains, according to the Hurricane Center.
At 2am yesterday, the storm was centered about 257km southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, moving west-northwest near 24kph, the Hurricane Center said.
Hurricane warnings were posted Wednesday for Jamaica, Haiti's southwest peninsula and eastern Cuba. A hurricane watch was in effect for Cayman Islands.
The Dominican Republic lifted a tropical storm watch for its south coast, but the Hurricane Center warned that strong squalls were expected Wednesday night.
"That was their decision. I tried to discourage them," Stacey Stewart, a hurricane specialist with the center, said.
Meteorologist Chris Hennon said the quadrant threatening Haiti "is typically the worst part of the storm" in terms of wind and rains.
Radio stations in Haiti and Jamaica warned people to stay away from rivers that could overflow their banks. Some southern roads in Haiti, which is dangerously deforested, already were blocked by flooding Wednesday.
Poverty-stricken Haitians said there was little they could do about the warnings.
"It's not only that we don't have money to prepare, we don't have money either to eat," said Martine Louis-Pierre, a 43-year-old mother of three.
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