Hurricane Paloma, packing winds of up to 195kph, slammed the central Cuban province of Camaguey overnight on Saturday, the third powerful hurricane this season to lash the Caribbean island.
The Cuban weather service said the storm weakened slightly from the 230kph winds that had threatened. Cuban officials said they expected Paloma to leave Cuba yesterday morning headed for the Bahamas.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said the storm had dropped from Category 4 — with winds of 230kph — to Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
PHOTO: AP
Paloma has already buffeted the Cayman Islands on its way to Cuba, but spared the islands heavy damage, local officials said.
The storm became a hurricane in the Caribbean Sea late on Thursday.
The storm hit after dark so the extent of damage wasn’t immediately clear.
But in parts of the Cayman Islands, hit by the late-season storm a day earlier, roofs were sheared off and an airstrip was left under 0.6m of water.
“There is one word to explain it: catastrophe,” the Miami Herald quoted John Bogle, a Red Cross volunteer in the Caymans, as saying. “I estimate there is 98 percent damage to all the roofs that I can see.”
Cuban state-run TV reported widespread blackouts and said a communications tower had fallen in the province of Camaguey, where Paloma made landfall on Saturday evening near the town of Santa Cruz del Sur.
Rains of up 25cm were predicted, with more possible in mountainous areas, the hurricane center said.
A storm surge up to 6m had caused coastal flooding, pushing the sea as much as 700m inland and flooding hundreds of homes. TV reports showed waves whipped up over coastal barriers, a beached boat listing on its side and, on shore, trees bending in the wind.
“The weather is really bad. It’s raining heavily and the wind is blowing strong,” said Mirtha, who was on watch in the Communist Party headquarters in Santa Cruz del Sur.
“I almost cannot open the windows but I can see some small palm trees that have fallen over,” she said, declining to give her full name.
More than 1 million people were evacuated as Paloma approached. So far, no deaths or injuries had been reported.
Cuba was struck by two powerful hurricanes, Gustav and Ike, within just seven days of each other between August and September. The island was devastated, with an estimated US$9 billion in damage.
Paloma is the third hurricane and the fifth major tropical storm to hit Cuba this season.
It is the 16th storm in the current season — set to end on Nov. 30 — in the Atlantic Ocean.
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