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Hurricane Ike continues on destructive path
Hurricane Ike roared towards Havana after forcing 1.2 million people to evacuate, killing at least four and ravaging homes across eastern and central Cuba, while US residents from Florida to the Texas border with Mexico braced for Ike's next strike.
- AP
- Published: 11:04 September 9, 2008
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Hurricane Ike roars across Cuba
Hurricane Ike roars across Cuba
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Hurricane Ike slams into Cuba
Hurricane Ike weakens to Category 2 across Cuba, one million evacuated
Havana: Hurricane Ike roared towards Havana after forcing 1.2 million people to evacuate, killing at least four and ravaging homes across eastern and central Cuba, while US residents from Florida to the Texas border with Mexico braced for Ike's next strike.
The hurricane, which raked the Bahamas and worsened floods in Haiti that have killed at least 331 people, made landfall on eastern Cuba as a terrifying Category 3 hurricane, then weakened on Monday as it ran along the length of the Caribbean's largest island.
Ike was a Category 1 storm early on Tuesday, but forecasters expected it to strengthen again before hitting Louisiana, Texas or northern Mexico this weekend.
On the narrow streets of Camaguey, falling utility poles crushed cars and the roaring wind transformed buildings of stone and brick into piles of rubble.
State television reported that Ike killed four people in Cuba, the first storm deaths on the island in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.
Two men were killed in central Cuba while removing an antenna from a roof. On the island's east, a woman died when her house collapsed on her and a man was killed by a falling tree.
Cuba, which has carried out well-executed evacuations over the years, ordered 1.2 million people to seek safety with friends and relatives or at government shelters, state television reported. In Havana, evacuations began in earnest late Monday afternoon.
The government closed schools and government offices in the capital as people reinforced windows with wood and formed long lines at bakeries. Along the seaside Malecon promenade, businesses were being shut down.
Ike was centred just off Cuba's southern coast early on Tuesday, gaining strength over warm waters, on a path to cross Cuba during the day and move out over the Gulf of Mexico in the evening.
"When it's out of Cuba it has the potential to become a lot stronger," said Felix Garcia, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
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