Kuwait Times

Published Date: August 19, 2007

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica: Jamaica braced yesterday for the arrival of Hurricane Dean as it barrelled towards the island leaving a trail of devastation across the Caribbean and killing at least five people. Hurried last-minute preparations were underway here early yesterday to batten down, with hundreds of people already packing into shelters, and panic-buying in many stores as people stocked up on essentials such as candles and water.

Dean was a Category 4 hurricane, the second-highest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, as it neared the verdant and mountainous island but it was expected to strengthen into a rare and potentially catastrophic Category 5 as it heads toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula today. Packing winds of up to 230 km an hour, the outer bands of Dean hit the island around 1500 GMT with the center of the storm just 210 km east-southeast of Kingston, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Up to 20 inches of rai
n could be dumped by the "extremely dangerous hurricane" on the island in the coming hours, the center said, warning also of "large, and dangerous battering waves.

The island's airports were shut Saturday, and the government ordered schools, particularly in low-lying areas, to open up as shelters amid bitter memories of Hurricane Ivan which killed 145 people in 2004. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called on all off-duty police officers, firefighters and prison warders to report for work, while the electricity company shut down the national grid as a safety measure.

But many people were reportedly refusing to abandon their homes. "The last time, I leave and go to the National Stadium (a designated shelter) it wasn't nice," one woman, who identified herself only as Angela, told the Jamaica Observer from her seaside town of Port Royal. She insisted she was better prepared this time. "I'm going to hoist them (her furniture and appliances) up on some blocks, and put up some tarpaulin. I am not leaving, I will take the risk," she said.

Meanwhile, Mexico was evacuating thousands of tourists as well as its oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, with Dean set to slam into the Yucatan peninsula on Tuesday. Hurricane Dean, which forecasters predict will gather steam becoming a monster category five after hitting Jamaica, earlier brushed past Haiti, lashing it with heavy rain and gale-force winds. Two people were killed in Haiti's southeastern Moron and southern Tiburon towns, and four people caught on a sailing boat were injured, Haitian offici
als said.

Dozens of homes were destroyed and there was huge damage to agricultural plantations in the worst-affected southeast regions where rivers burst their banks leading to massive flooding. More than 1,000 were also evacuated from low-lying areas in the country, which is one of the world's poorest. Two people were also killed in the French territory of Martinique.

And a boy of 16 was reported dead and several injured in the Dominican Republic as Dean swept by to the south, sending great waves crashing onto its shores, the governor of eastern Santo Domingo province Eladio Martinez said on radio. "Dean has the potential to attain category five hurricane status over the northwestern Caribbean Sea," the US National Hurricane Center warned in a statement issued in Miami, Florida.

The White House has said it stands ready to aid Jamaica if needed in the wake of the hurricane, and preparations are also underway in the southern US state of Texas which Dean could lash later in the week. In Cuba just to the north of Jamaica, authorities began evacuating tens of thousands of people in six eastern provinces to save them from possible flooding and destruction as the storm was to sweep by later yesterday.

In Mexico, the state oil company PEMEX began evacuating some 13,360 workers from more than 140 oil platforms, using 55 boats and 29 helicopters, it said in a statement. Some 90,000 tourists were also being evacuated from Cancun and other popular barrier islands of the "Mayan Riviera" after authorities blocked all new tourist arrivals. On Saturday, some 260 flights took off from Cancun airport carrying tourists away from the area. In 2005, Wilma, one of the strongest hurricanes ever, made a direct hit on Ca
ncun and Cozumel and held over the area for hours, wiping out hotels and beaches that have still not been totally rebuilt.

Category 5 hurricanes are rare. Until the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, records showed only two years - 1960 and 1961 - with more than one Category 5 storm. But in 2005, four hurricanes reached that strength - Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma - triggering debate about the impact of global warming on tropical cyclones. - Agencies