Deadly Gustav wreaks havoc
2008-08-29 10:01
Kingston - Tropical Storm Gustav battered Jamaica on Friday, dumping rain and ripping roofs off homes and threatened to grow into a hurricane after leaving 59 people dead in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Anxiety also grew on the US Gulf Coast on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and authorities in New Orleans were planning a possible mandatory evacuation to prevent a repeat of the devastation and deaths wreaked earlier.
Authorities in Louisiana and Mississippi have already declared states of emergency before Gustav's expected landfall late on Monday as a hurricane.
Gustav was forecast to pummel the Cayman Islands and the western tip of Cuba before turning north and entering the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend.
The centre of the storm was expected to move back over water later on Friday, where it could mushroom into a hurricane later in the day or Saturday, the US National Hurricane Centre said in its latest advisory.
Gustav's powerful winds ripped off roofs and threatened to wreak havoc on Jamaica's banana industry, officials said. Maximum sustained winds slowed to 100km per hour early on Friday.
The two international airports in Jamaica were closed and the government urged residents to stay indoors. Streets in the capital city of Kingston were deserted.
Emergency shelters
The storm could dump up to 30cm of rainfall in parts of Jamaica and trigger mudslides, flash floods and tidal flooding like those seen in Haiti.
Civil defence officials in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince said on Thursday that 51 people died, seven went missing and 22 had been injured from the ravages of the storm and subsequent flooding.
Gustav struck the island of Hispaniola, shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, as a Category One hurricane on Tuesday.
On Thursday, thousands of Haitians were still in emergency shelters, receiving government and NGO aid.
Gustav destroyed untold numbers of homes, bridges and other structures after floodwaters inundated entire villages in Haiti.
Officials said the death toll could rise.
"There are regions affected by the storm that our teams have not been able to reach," civil protection director Alta Jean-Baptiste told reporters in Port-au-Prince, adding that most of the deaths occurred in Haiti's southeast.
Wide swathe of destruction
"The majority of victims died when their houses collapsed, or were killed by falling trees. Others drowned when they tried to cross swollen rivers," she said.
The impact of the storm was worse coming just days after Tropical Storm Fay, which had lashed the Caribbean with severe winds and flooding.
In the Dominican Republic, Gustav left a wide swathe of destruction killing eight people and forcing more than 6 000 to abandon their homes, local authorities said.
In Cuba, more than 60 000 people were evacuated in eastern provinces as a precaution, authorities said.
Meanwhile, the eighth tropical storm of the hurricane season, dubbed Hanna, was churning in the Atlantic and has the potential to become a hurricane.