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Tropical Storm Fay puts Cuba in its crosshairs after pounding neighbors

A car attempts to get through a flooded avenue in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Saturday after Tropical Storm Fay caused floods in several parts of the country. PHOTO: EPA

Tropical Storm Fay roared toward Cuba yesterday after lashing Haiti and the Dominican Republic with torrential rains and floods that killed at least four people.

Forecasters said Fay was expected to strengthen yesterday and could be hurricane strength when it passes over Cuba and zeros in on Florida, where officials declared a state of emergency on Saturday.

In Cuba, officials in the eastern province of Santiago advised farmers to move livestock to higher ground and were preparing to evacuate tourists from low-lying coastal areas, the newspaper Granma reported on its Web site.

The Cuban government said a hurricane watch was in effect for the island from the province of Matanzas east to Sancti Spiritus, and a tropical storm warning was in effect for Guantanamo Bay. Fay’s path was expected to take it near the southern coast of the island yesterday and over western Cuba last night or today.

The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said late on Saturday night that the storm was located about 280km southeast of Camaguey, Cuba. It was heading west at about 22kph, with maximum sustained winds of 75kph.

A man died on Saturday in Haiti while trying to cross a river in Leogane, south of Port-au-Prince, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of Haiti’s civil protection agency.

Rice fields in the Artibonite Valley, Haiti’s most fertile region, were flooded, reports from Radio Ginen said. And Fay’s heavy winds destroyed banana crops in Arcahaie, north of the capital, although it is unclear how many acres were affected, Jean-Baptiste said.

Haiti has struggled to cope with a food crisis that sparked deadly riots in April.

In the Dominican Republic, a 34-year-old woman drowned when her family tried to cross a swollen river in a car, civil defense agency director Luis Luna Paulino said. The bodies of her missing 13-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew were found on Saturday afternoon, but her husband swam to safety.

A tropical storm warning has been issued for the Cayman Islands, and a tropical storm watch remains in effect for the Bahamas and Jamaica.

In Florida, Governor Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency. Fay “threatens the state of Florida with a major disaster,” he wrote in an executive order.

Residents and tourists in the Florida Keys prepared for the storm, which forecasters said could strengthen to a hurricane and begin battering the island chain today.
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