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Four killed as Ike lashes at Cuba

A car sits under rubble after Hurricane Ike hit Holguin, Cuba, on Monday. Ike, which raked the Bahamas and worsened floods in Haiti that have killed 321 people, made landfall in Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane, then weakened on Monday to Category 2 as it ran along the length of the Caribbean’s largest island. PHOTO: AP

The whole of Cuba was in a state of emergency as Hurricane Ike looked likely to batter Havana yesterday as well as western sections of the island after already leaving four dead.

More than 24 hours after making landfall on Sunday night at Cabo Lucrecia in the east, Ike continued to lash the Caribbean island with sustained winds of 130kph.

On Monday night, Cuban TV reported that at least four people had died in accidents caused by Ike. Rescue officials were bracing for higher death tolls as rain continued across the Caribbean.

Authorities have evacuated nearly one-tenth of the population to safer buildings and areas away from surging ocean tides.

In coastal Holguin Province on Monday night, trees were blown down, roofs blown off and electrical poles knocked down across roads, television reports said.

Ike, which had weakened to a category one hurricane on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale as it traveled overland through Cuba, was veering in a more westerly direction and was expected to cross western Cuba yesterday, heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, said the National Weather Center in Miami, Florida.

After it leaves Cuba, the storm was forecast to strengthen and cast a possible trajectory cone sweeping from eastern Louisiana to the Texas coast and down into Mexico over the coming days.

Florida’s coastal areas breathed a sigh of relief as the storm changed course and evacuees and tourists returned to the Florida Keys.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lowell formed on the Pacific coast of Mexico with sustained winds of 85kph and higher gusts.

Cuban authorities, who have evacuated 1.6 million people to safety, extended the “cyclone alarm” to include the western provinces of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth, which were devastated by Hurricane Gustav a week earlier.

Cuban authorities called upon people in Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth to suspend reconstruction work on damage caused by Gustav in the face of the approaching wallop from Ike.

Gustav hit the area with sustained winds of 220kph, causing damage and destruction to more than 100,000 homes and devastating infrastructure and agriculture.

On its way to Cuba, Ike also swept destruction across the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

Cuba over the weekend asked the US government to suspend its decades-old embargo on exports of desperately needed material for recovery and protection of human life, but US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a resounding “no” to the request on Sunday.
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