Posted on Mon, Sep. 01, 2008
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By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press Writer
HAVANA --
After a destructive and deadly march across the Caribbean, Hurricane
Gustav was bearing down on southern Louisiana early Monday.
The hurricane smashed tens of thousands of homes, toppled trees and
telephone poles and washed out roads in Cuba, but no deaths were
reported Sunday as the massive storm roared away from the island with
the U.S. Gulf Coast in its sights.
Gustav made a direct hit on the Isla de la Juventud south of the Cuban
mainland as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Saturday with screaming
140 mph (220 kph) winds. It then passed across the country's western tip
before heading into the Gulf of Mexico on a collision course with the
southern United States.
Gustav earlier killed 94 people by triggering floods and landslides in
Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Jamaica's Emergency
Management office on Sunday raised Gustav's death toll there to 10, and
Haiti upped its count to 76.
In Cuba, the storm damaged or destroyed 86,000 homes and downed 80
electricity towers across the island, said Col. Miguel Angel Puig, head
of operations for Cuban civil defense.
Speaking on a government news round-table program, Puig said 19 people
were injured, though none gravely. Most of the 250,000 residents who
were evacuated to shelters were back home by Sunday evening.
On Isla de la Juventud, surging waters tossed a transport ferry from its
moorings into a neighborhood in the city of Nueva Gerona, and knocked
down radio and television towers. The storm snapped fruit trees, flooded
all major roads and demolished homes.
In Pinar del Rio, the western tobacco-producing region, highways were
blocked by fallen trees and downed power lines, and all public
transportation ground to a halt. People who lost their homes gathered in
nearby fields, and Puig said authorities were working to relocate those
left homeless by the storm. He did not say how many of the 86,000
damaged homes had been destroyed, however.
Officials measured gusts of 212 mph (340 kph) in the western town of
Paso Real del San Diego - a new wind speed record for a country often
hit by major hurricanes, according to Miguel Angel Hernandez of the
Cuban Institute of Meteorology.
Gustav's winds appeared to have done the most damage, but some areas
experienced flooding.
In the fishing town of Batabano, 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of
Havana, evacuees - some with their dogs in tow - returned to their
pastel-colored, wooden homes to find water seeping under the doors.
Nearby streets were flooded waist-deep.
"My house is full of water," said Aldo Tomas, 43, pulling palm branches
from his living room. "But we expected more. We expected worse."
Meanwhile on Monday, Tropical Storm Hanna was drifting westward in the
Atlantic with maximum sustained winds near 50 mph (85 kph). A tropical
storm warning was in effect for the Turks and Caicos Islands and the
Bahamas.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/667280.html
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