(Associated
Press) Hurricane Sandy lashed precarious shantytowns, stranded travelers and
downed power lines with heavy wind and rain Wednesday as it roared across
Jamaica and then headed for an overnight landfall in eastern Cuba and go on to
threaten the Bahamas and possibly Florida.
Sandy's
death toll was at least two. An elderly man was killed in Jamaica when he was
crushed by a boulder that rolled onto his clapboard house, police reported. Earlier
Wednesday, a woman in Haiti was swept away by a rushing river she was trying to
cross.
The
storm hit Jamaica as a category 1 hurricane then strengthened as it spun over
open sea toward Cuba. U.S. forecasters said it had maximum sustained winds of
90 mph (150 kph) late Wednesday and might grow into a category 2 storm before
going ashore. It was moving north at about 13 mph (20 kph) and hurricane-force
winds extended outward up to 30 miles (45 kilometers) from the center.
The
hurricane's eye crossed over Jamaica by Wednesday evening and emerged from its
northern coast near the town of Port Antonio, meteorologists said, but rain and
winds continued to pound the Caribbean island into the night.
It
was the first direct hit by the eye of a hurricane on Jamaica since Hurricane
Gilbert 24 years ago, and fearful authorities closed the island's international
airports and police ordered 48-hour curfews in major towns to keep people off
the streets and deter looting. Cruise ships changed their itineraries to avoid
the storm, which made landfall five miles (8 kilometers) east of the capital,
Kingston.
Flash
floods and mudslides were a threat for this debt-shackled tropical island of
roughly 2.7 million inhabitants, which has a crumbling infrastructure and a
number of sprawling shantytowns built on steep embankments and along gullies
that sluice runoff water to the sea.
In
the hilly community of Kintyre, on the outskirts of Kingston, Sharon Gayle and
a few of her neighbors expected to completely lose the town's bridge over the
Hope River, which washed away a section of the span just three weeks ago during
a heavy downpour. The shell of a concrete home that collapsed into the river
and killed two people several years ago still lies toppled on the sandy banks.
"I'm
really nervous. We're trying not to show it in front of the children
though," the mother of three said, huddling under a sopping white towel as
she stared at the rising river.
The
18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was expected to pass over
eastern Cuba early Thursday, missing the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay,
where pretrial hearings were being held for a suspect in the deadly 2000 attack
on the destroyer USS Cole off Yemen.
Cuban
authorities issued a hurricane warning for several provinces in the east, and
the Bahamas posted a similar alert for its southeastern Ragged Islands and the
central and northwestern Bahamas, where the storm was predicted to pass
Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.
Forecasters
at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said tropical storm conditions
were possible along the southeastern Florida coast, the Upper Keys and Florida
Bay by Friday morning. A tropical storm watch was in effect for the area, the
center said.
In
southwestern Haiti, a woman died in the town of Camp Perrin after she was swept
away by a river she was trying to cross, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of
the country's civil protection office. There were reports of extensive damage
to Port Salut on Haiti's far-southwestern coast after a river burst its banks.
Mayor Larock Pierre Clervert said a hotel was destroyed by flood waters.
Across
Jamaica, the poor in slums and moneyed residents in gated communities hunkered
down at home as powerful winds shrieked around buildings and sent sheets of
rain sideways. Many homes were lit by candlelight and lanterns since tens of
thousands of power utility customers were without electricity.
Stranded
business travelers and a smattering of locals rode out the Category 1 hurricane
in hotels clustered along a strip in Kingston's financial district. Some read
prayer books or novels, while others watched movies or communicated with loved
ones on computers.
Cris
Hopkinson, a Toronto woman who was on a business trip, said she hoped to catch
a flight off the island Friday once the stormy weather cleared.
"For
now, I'm just hoping that the glass in the windows doesn't shatter from the
winds," Hopkinson said in the dining room of the Courtleigh Hotel.
About
a mile away in the rough neighborhood of Grants Pen, where shops have been
ransacked in the past during storms, a number of young men ignored the curfew,
riding on bicycles or walking in small groups in the steady rain.
Cecile
Graham, a mother of two teenagers, said she was worried about the possibility
of burglaries or looting at the small markets and shops that line the main
road.
"I
hope that all the police are out and we won't have the looting that has taken
place before," she said.
Police
slowly drove through drenched communities in the coastal capital with their
cruisers' lights flashing. A senior police superintendent was shot in troubled
West Kingston, but the circumstances were murky.
The
storm was predicted to drop as much as 12 inches (25 centimeters) of rain,
especially over central and eastern parts of Jamaica, the country's
meteorological service said. Some isolated spots could see as much as 20 inches
(50 centimeters), according to U.S. forecasters. Sea water washed over the streets
of southern coastal towns like Port Royal, a depressed fishing village at the
tip of a spit of land near Kingston's airport.
Airports
in Kingston and Montego Bay shut down for the day and Royal Caribbean Cruises
Ltd. announced that its Allure of the Seas megaship would not stop at Jamaica's
northern Falmouth terminal on Wednesday, remaining at sea instead. Other cruise
lines also rerouted ships from port calls to Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.
No comments:
Post a Comment