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Hurricane Paloma slams into southern Cuba
A ferocious Hurricane Paloma roared across Cuba on Sunday, downing power lines, flooding the coast and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate on an island still recovering from two other devastating storms.
- AP
- Published: 09:22 November 9, 2008
Camaguey: A ferocious Hurricane Paloma roared across Cuba on Sunday, downing power lines, flooding the coast and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate on an island still recovering from two other devastating storms.
Early reports of damage were limited, but Cuban state media said the late-season storm toppled a major communications tower on the southern coast, interrupted electricity and phone service, and sent sea surges of up to 700 metres along the coast.
Paloma made landfall near Santa Cruz del Sur late on Saturday as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, but soon weakened to a Category 1 storm with winds of 140km/h, according to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Forecasters warned that even though the hurricane had lost its intensity, it could still produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.
The storm was expected to continue to lose strength even as it moved across Cuba and headed toward the central Bahamas on Monday morning. The storm was not expected to threaten the southern tip of Florida.
In the central-eastern Cuban province of Camaguey, more than 220,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas. Another 170,000 people were moved in the eastern province of Las Tunas.
At 0900 GMT on Sunday, Paloma was located about 50 kilometres east-southeast of Camaguey. Once packing winds of 145 mph, the storm had slowed over land and was moving northeast at about 7km/h.
Hurricane force winds reached up to 50 kilometres from the storm's centre, and up to 25 centimetres of rain was predicted in central and eastern Cuba, with isolated totals of 50 centimetres possible.
Former President Fidel Castro warned that Paloma would damage roads and new crops planted after hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit in late August and early September, causing an estimated $9.4 billion in damage and destroyed nearly a third of Cuba's crops.
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