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.
The Jamaican government urged people to flee low-lying and landslide-prone areas, put troops and police on alert and bussed people to evacuation centers. But residents of one low-lying seaport town close to Kingston 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 16th century. In fact, if you come by here later today you will see me drinking rum over in that bar with some friends. The Jamaican power company said it would switch off electricity after 10 a.m. local time (1500 GMT). Lines formed at gas stations and supermarkets were crammed as shoppers bought batteries, flashlights, canned tuna, rice and water. Campaigning for Aug. 27 elections was halted.
Dean packed sustained winds of 145 miles per hour (230 km per hour) and its eye was about 180 miles (295 km) east-southeast of the capital Kingston at 8 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).
Hurricane warnings were also in effect for the Cayman islands and parts of Haiti and a tropical storm warning was issued for parts of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Dean was the first hurricane of what is expected to be an above-average 2007 Atlantic storm season. "Officials in the Dominican Republic, where the hurricane sent 18-foot (5.5-meter) waves crashing onto southern beaches," said a 16-year-old Haitian was swept out to sea.
That brought to at least four the number of victims since Dean roared into the Caribbean between the Lesser Antilles islands of Martinique and St. Lucia on Friday. Dean was moving west-northwest at 18 mph (30 kph) and was being watched closely by energy markets, which have been skittish since a series of storms in 2004 and 2005 toppled Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, flooded refineries and cut pipelines.
The latest computer models showed Dean tracking just to the south of Jamaica. That could mean its most damaging winds in the northeast quadrant could slam Kingston.
It was then expected to pass the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British territory and financial center, and hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula early in the week. After that it was likely to aim for the northern Mexico coast rather than threatening the most critical US offshore oil and gas production areas further north. Mexican authorities began evacuations from the Caribbean coast, while US President George W. Bush issued an emergency declaration for Texas to free up federal help and funds. The US space shuttle Endeavour hastily departed the orbiting International Space Station in order to land back on Earth a day ahead of schedule in case the storm forced NASA to evacuate its mission control center in Houston.
Cuba declared a hurricane emergency for the southeast provinces of Guantanamo, Granma and Santiago de Cuba, and westernmost province of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth, evacuating tens of thousands of people from low lying areas in the four provinces and along the entire southern coast. Dean's destructive core passed south of Haiti's southern coast, and there were no immediate reports of emergencies. But tropical cyclones frequently trigger flash floods and mudslides in the deforested, poverty-stricken country of 8 million.
More rain, diseases worsen South Asia floods
Heavy rain triggered by storms caused fresh flooding in India and Bangladesh on Sunday, as authorities battled bad weather to supply food and medicines to victims of some of the worst floods in South Asia in years. Thousands of people have been marooned over the last two days across densely populated India's east and northeast and neighboring Bangladesh after rivers, swollen by days of heavy monsoon rain, broke through mud embankments, swamped villages and destroyed crops. Around 1,000 people have died, mostly due to drowning or house collapses but also because of snakebite and diarrhea, in the region and hundreds of thousands are still homeless in the latest flooding, which began about a month ago. Fresh flooding over the weekend brought misery to another 100,000 people in India's northeastern state of Assam, who were displaced after their houses were inundated, officials said. Traffic on a main highway in the state's Barpeta district was stopped and people evacuated after two children drowned overnight in the area, they said.
Benzer Haberler 
World
