Hurricane Ike swirled over the Gulf of Mexico yesterday, targeting Texas near the US offshore oil patch after toppling decrepit buildings in Cuba’s capital and ripping the island from end to end.
Ike, a Category 1 storm with 130kph winds, left a long trail of destruction across the Caribbean and had energy companies fearful it could do the same to their Gulf oil rigs as they scurried to evacuate workers and shut down production.
Forecasters said Ike would likely regain power in the Gulf’s warm waters and become a major storm again, revving up to a Category 3 on the five-step hurricane intensity scale with a minimum of 178kph winds.
But latest projections pointed Ike toward the middle of the Texas coast, skirting to the west of the main region for offshore production in the Gulf, which provides a quarter of US oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.
Rainfall of up to 672mm was possible in the lower Florida keys, which could also face storm surges, large waves and isolated tornadoes and waterspouts yesterday, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Large swells would affect the east coast of Florida for the next day or so and could produce dangerous rip currents.
In Cuba, big waves and storm surges were expected to subside yesterday, but heavy rains on the western end of the island could produce flash floods, the center said.
Ike has already wreaked widespread damage in Cuba.
Few official figures have emerged, but state-run media showed a panorama of destruction across the island, still reeling from the more powerful Hurricane Gustav 10 days ago.
Ike struck eastern Cuba on Sunday with 195kph winds and torrential rains that destroyed buildings, wiped out the electricity grid, toppled trees, leveled crops including sugar cane fields, and turned rivers into roaring torrents.
After up to 400mm of rain fell on the island the downpour continued yesterday even as Ike moved away, causing widespread flooding and growing alarm among officials.
Havana, which barely escaped the full wrath of Gustav, was pounded by Ike’s winds and rain on Monday and Tuesday, which toppled at least 16 of the many beautiful but crumbling old buildings in the capital.
After crossing the eastern provinces, Ike dipped into the Caribbean and headed northwest where it made its second Cuba landfall on Tuesday at Punta la Capitana in westernmost Pinar del Rio province.
Meanwhile, the UN said it would launch an emergency appeal for money with about 800,000 people in Haiti in need of urgent help, nearly half of them children. Four major storms, two of them hurricanes, have struck Haiti in less than four weeks. Haiti’s third most populous city was the epicenter of a humanitarian disaster on Tuesday, with supplies slowly arriving in waterlogged Gonaives — but nowhere near the amount needed for flood victims who have gone for days without food or clean water.
The UN Mission in Haiti said 101 bodies have been found in Gonaives since Monday.
All told more than 600 Haitians have died in the four storms, and the disaster is still unfolding.
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