KINGSTON, Jamaica (10 Sep 2004) -- Few Jamaicans have sought the safety of the more than 1,000 shelters the Caribbean nation opened in anticipation of lethal Hurricane Ivan. In the United States, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush issued a mandatory evacuation order at 4 p.m. Friday for Monroe County in the far southwest of the state, including the Florida Keys. Several towns in the Everglades are also affected by the order. The Category 4 storm damaged or destroyed 90 percent of buildings in Grenada. Seventeen people were killed there, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA). Four people were killed in the Dominican Republic and four in Venezuela. Altogether in the storm's rampage across the Caribbean, at least 25 people have died, government sources said. According to press reports, there was a death in Barbados and one in Tobago, but CDERA could not confirm whether the deaths were storm-related. Still, most Jamaicans told to evacuate aren't heeding the order. Officials told about 500,000 people living in low-lying areas to leave their homes. As of Friday morning, 300 people were in shelters. It is not known if some people moved in with relatives or friends in mountainous regions. "We are concerned," said Barbara Carby of Jamaica's Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management. "We called for the evacuation in the first place because we feared for their safety. But historically, people have been very reluctant to evacuate. Most people seem to prefer to ride things out where they live." With just a few hours to go before the storm hits land, panic buying created long lines for supplies in the Jamaican capital of Kingston. Ivan's forecast path puts the storm over the island of 2.7 million people by Friday night, and it is then expected to move toward the Cayman Islands and Cuba before possibly reaching the Florida Keys on Monday afternoon. | | As of 5 p.m. Friday, Ivan was about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southeast of Kingston. Its maximum sustained winds were 140 mph (220 kph). The storm is moving west-northwest at near 13 mph (20 kph), which would put the center in Jamaica about at 10 p.m. Friday. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 60 miles (95 kilometers) from the center of the storm, and winds of tropical storm strength extend outward up to 175 miles (280 kilometers). In St. George's, Grenada's capital, police used tear gas against suspected looters, and there were reports of entire families participating in the frenzy. Troops from other Caribbean nations arrived to help restore order. Grenada's 90,000 residents have no water or power, and inmates from a prison flattened by the storm are at large, according to CDERA. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, said that though forecasters were looking at a dozen different possibilities for where the storm might strike in the United States, the most likely path would take it over the Florida Keys and into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The storm's projected path has shifted slightly to the west, which means that it is now considered unlikely that Ivan would strike Florida's eastern coast, as Hurricane Frances did, Mayfield said. The storm's ultimate direction could be determined by a low-pressure system expected to develop over the Southern United States in the coming days, he said. If the low develops over Alabama, Ivan would veer closer to Florida; if it develops over Arkansas, it would move farther west over open water toward the upper Gulf Coast, Mayfield said. SOURCE - CNN |
