Jamaica 'set to miss worst of Hurricane Ivan'
Hurricane Ivan lashed Jamaica’s coast today but is not expected to make a direct hit, meteorologists said.
Sporadic gunfire and looting was reported in violence-prone Kingston, but police could not confirm that and the telephone service appeared to fail as Ivan passed.
Armed troops, on high alert and carrying assault rifles, were patrolling Kingston, which was blacked out like the rest of the island by utility officers hoping to minimize damage.
Ivan’s eye “wobbled toward the west for the past few hours”, bringing it within 35 miles of Kingston but keeping it off the island, according to the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
“They did get very extreme winds and there’s still going to be a lot of damage, but the 155-mph winds (in the eye of the storm) passed south of Jamaica and did not make landfall,” said Jennifer Pralgo, a meteorologist at the centre.
Jamaicans, who have resorted to prayer as the ferocious hurricane neared, could say that they have been answered.
“All of us are continuing to hope and pray that by some miracle we may at the last minute be spared the worst,” Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said on Wednesday, as the destruction Ivan wrought in Grenada became known.
Pralgo said Ivan still could return to a projected path that would take it over the smaller of the Cayman islands, across western Cuba and into the heart of southern Florida.
“We’re going to have to wait and see,” she said. “It may come back to course.”
The death toll elsewhere in the Caribbean rose to 37, the latest victim an eight-year-old boy who died on Friday of head injuries sustained when the storm destroyed his home in Grenada on Tuesday.
At 1am Jamaican time (7am Irish time), Ivan was centred about 50 miles southwest of Kingston, expected to resume a west-northwest motion near 10 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended 60 miles and tropical storm-force winds another 175 miles.
The Cayman government posted a hurricane warning and urged residents of all three Caymanian islands to prepare “as for direct impact”.
Cuba declared a hurricane watch last night after its leader, Fidel Castro, warned residents to brace themselves. ”Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together” to rebuild, he said.
In South Florida, long lines reappeared at petrol stations and shoppers swarmed home building stores and supermarkets. Forecasters said Ivan could tear through the Keys as early as Monday.
The wobble that saved a direct hit on Jamaica could move it west into the Gulf of Mexico.
Howling winds and sheets of horizontal rain crashed around the capital in the south after Patterson declared a state of emergency and pleaded with the half million people considered in danger – about one in five islanders – to get to shelters. Most refused for fear abandoned homes would be robbed.
“I’m not saying I’m not afraid for my life but we’ve got to stay here and protect our things,” said Lorna Brown, 49, pointing to a stove, television, cooking utensils and large bed crowded into a one-room concrete home on the beach at the northwestern resort of Montego Bay.
In areas already struck by Ivan, authorities discovered more bodies along Venezuela’s flooded coast and in Grenada, where the U.S. State Department was arranging for the evacuations of all Americans who wish to leave.
“When dogs interfere with garbage bags and strew the contents all over the place – that’s what Grenada looks like,” Trinidadian leader Patrick Manning said after visiting the island.
In Jamaica earlier, awed onlookers stood transfixed on the seaside Palisadoes Highway near Kingston’s airport as 23ft waves crashed to shore, thrusting rocks and dead tree branches more than 100 feet into the road.
“I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said businessman Chester Pinnock, huddled under an umbrella against drenching rain.
“This is going to be disastrous. We could have hundreds dead. Hurricane Gilbert was a puppy compared to this,” he said.
Gilbert, the last major storm to strike Jamaica, killed dozens of people and inflicted massive damages as a Category 3 storm in 1988.
“What we’re experiencing now is only the beginning,” Jamaica’s leader said in an address to the nation. ”Residents living near coastal areas must evacuate before it’s too late. … I cannot stress too strongly that Ivan is a dangerous hurricane.”
But only 5,000 people moved into shelters, emergency management director Barbara Carby said.
In Montego Bay, the Barnett River overflowed its banks, putting some businesses four feet under water and flooding inland roads and farmlands. Drenching rain washed away the main northern coastal road, the A1, just outside Montego Bay.
The British Royal Navy frigate HMS Richmond, which rushed to Grenada’s rescue Wednesday, was speeding to Jamaica along with a supply ship, Commander Mike MacCartain told the BBC.
East of Jamaica, in neighbouring Haiti, flooding destroyed at least two houses and damaged a dozen more, but people expressed relief they were spared further catastrophe in a year that has already brought a bloody rebellion and deadly floods.
“First we had a political hurricane, then an economic hurricane and now, with the natural hurricane, we’re just glad God saved us,” said Jude Vante, 32, an unemployed mason in low-lying Les Cayes, on the southern peninsula.
Ivan became the fourth major hurricane of the Atlantic Season on Sunday. It damaged dozens of homes in Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent Tuesday before making a direct hit on Grenada, which it left a wasteland of flattened houses, twisted metal and splintered wood. It damaged 90% of homes there, tossed sailboats to shore and set off looting among some of the 100,000 residents left without electricity, water and telephone service.
Manning, the Trinidadian leader, said Grenada’s priorities are establishing security to end looting recapturing prisoners providing food, potable water, tents, blankets, and materials to rebuild and restoring communications and electricity.
The American Red Cross disaster unit said Grenada’s government has temporarily closed the country to relief shipments to get ensure security. The unit’s director, Doug Allen, said Grenada needs relief by Sunday to avoid a critical situation.
More than 100 Caribbean soldiers from five countries arrived Thursday to help restore order on the island of 100,000.
On Friday, Trinidadian troops armed with assault rifles patrolled the marina and shopping area around the downtown Carenage, and police Superintendent Edvin Martin reported only scattered looting.
Up to 75 convicts remained at large after about 150 of the prison’s 325 inmates escaped when the storm damaged the prison.
Ivan has killed 26 people in Grenada, five in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados, and four youngsters in the Dominican Republic.
