Caribbean
Hurricane Dean batters Jamaica
By Horace Helps
Aug 20, 2007, 13:37

KINGSTON (Reuters) - Hurricane Dean buffeted Jamaica's southern coast, flooding the capital and littering it with broken trees and roofs after killing nine people as it tore through the Carribbean on Monday toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Dean was an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 hurricane, the second-highest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it could strengthen to a potentially catastrophic Category 5 over the next 24 hours.

Packing winds of near 150 miles per hour (240 kph), the hurricane was moving south of the Cayman Islands at 5 a.m. (10 a.m. BST) with it's eye 115 miles (185 km) south-southeast of Grand Cayman, moving westward, or west-north-westward.

The eye of the storm passed just south of Jamaica but the intense wall of winds around the calm center pummelled the island. Sheets of rain pelted the capital of Kingston and roads were blocked by toppled trees, utility poles and smashed roofs.

The wind howled over the island nation of 3 million people and pounding waves battered the southern coast. Mudslides were reported in several parts of the mountainous country.

Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller declared a month-long state of emergency and called a cabinet meeting to discuss the potential impact on August 27 general elections.

At least one man was missing after falling trees tore into his house and officials urged people to evacuate their homes and seek safety.

"They're still getting pretty beaten up," said hurricane center forecaster Dave Roberts. "I know they were massively flooded from the reports that we had."

Police said they shot and wounded two men caught trying to break into a business in the capital during the storm.

Local media reported 17 fishermen and women had been stranded on the Pedro Cays, a small island chain, directly in the path of the hurricane.

The government urged residents to go to shelters. But many people refused to flee.

"We are going nowhere," Byron Thompson said in the former buccaneer town of Port Royal, settled by pirate Henry Morgan in the 17th century. "In fact, if you come by here later today you will see me drinking rum over in that bar with some friends."

HURRICANE WARNINGS

Hurricane warnings were in effect for the coast of Belize and the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, all the way to the popular tourist destination of Cancun.

Thousands of frightened tourists on Mexico's Caribbean coast stood in line for hours at airports to flee before Dean's expected arrival.

The latest computer tracking models forecast hurricane would spare the U.S. Gulf Coast but slam into the Yucatan, cross the Bay of Campeche and then hit central Mexico.

Four people were killed in Haiti, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, bringing to at least nine the number killed since Dean roared into the Carribbean as the first hurricane of what is expected to be an active 2007 Atlantic season.

Risk modelling company EQECAT Inc. estimated insured losses from Dean's rampage through the Caribbean islands at $1.5 billion (757 million pounds) to $3 billion, most of it in Jamaica.

Dean was moving west at 21 mph (33 kph), watched closely by energy markets which have been nervous since a series of storms in 2004 and 2005 toppled Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, flooded refineries and cut pipelines.

Mexico's Pemex oil company began evacuating 13,360 workers from its Gulf rigs.

The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour is heading back to Earth from the International Space Station so it can land a day early in case the storm forces NASA to evacuate its Houston center.

Category 5 hurricanes are rare but in 2005 there were four, including Katrina, reinforcing research that suggests global warming may increase the strength of tropical cyclones.

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