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Ike makes landfall in Cuba, thousands flee

Hurricane Ike blows through trees just after daybreak on Sunday on the island of Providenciales in the Turks & Caicos Islands. PHOTO: AP

Hurricane Ike made landfall in Cuba, packing maximum sustained winds of 195 kph, after sweeping destruction across Haiti, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

The eye of the storm hit about 10pm on Sunday near Punta Lucrecia in Hulguin province, the Cuban weather service said.

Ike weakened into a category 3 storm on the five-category Saffir-Simpson scale before it churned up meters-high waves and torrential rains in Cuba, where hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. Cuba also began evacuating an estimated 13,000 international tourists from the Varadero peninsula, 120km east of Havana.

The storm was expected to lose more steam as it crossed the 1,000km-long Caribbean island from east to west before returning to open water today south of the US state of Florida.

In Haiti, at least 47 people died in the storm, drowning in the city of Cabaret, the Haiti Press news agency reported. Ike’s torrential rains caused the Bretelle River to breach its banks and flood the entire city 35km north of Port-au-Prince.

Ike was the latest storm to hit the poverty-stricken country since the middle of last month. It brought the number of dead there from Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike to at least 323 people.

In the Turks and Caicos, 80 percent of the homes were reported damaged or destroyed by Ike, but the 38,000 residents of the string of 30 islands were brought to safety.

Rescue officials were bracing for higher death tolls as the rain continued across the Caribbean.

Forecasters predicted Ike’s next port of call would be Florida, where evacuations had already started, first of tourists, then of residents in the Florida Keys, which stretch out toward western Cuba.

US President George W Bush declared Florida a disaster area in advance to free up emergency aid money and deployment of the National Guard when the storm hits.

Cuba was still recovering from Hurricane Gustav eight days ago, which left 100,000 people homeless and prompted the Cuban government to ask the US government to suspend its embargo on exports of desperately needed material.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a resounding “no” to the request. Speaking to reporters in Rabat, Morocco, Rice said it would not be “wise” to lift the embargo now, given the authoritarian passing of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul earlier this year, which she said is “not acceptable in a Western Hemisphere that is democratic and it is not acceptable for the Cuban people.”

The Cuban daily newspaper Juventud Rebelde warned on Sunday that Ike could be the biggest threat to the island in 50 years.

In Cuba, high alarm was sounded for Santiago de Cuba, Granma, Holguin, Las Tunas, Camaguey, Ciego de Avila, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritus and Cienfuegos y Matanzas.

In Haiti, hundreds of thousands in the northern town of Gonaives have been virtually cut off from relief supplies after the previous storms destroyed bridges.

But Manuela Gonzalez, head of the UN offices for humanitarian aid in Haiti, dismissed media reports that 500 had died.
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