Ivan Batters Caymans, Heads for Cuba
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands – Hurricane Ivan battered the Cayman Islands with ferocious 150-mph winds Sunday, flooding homes, ripping off roofs and toppling trees three stories tall as its eye passed just offshore.
Ivan has killed at least 60 people across the Caribbean and was expected to strike western Cuba, where residents have dubbed the storm “Ivan the Terrible,” on Monday. More than 1 million Cubans were evacuated from their homes.
The storm also could brush the Florida Keys and parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Mexico issued a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning for the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula.
The hurricane, which grew to the most powerful Category 5 with 165 mph winds Saturday, lost some strength before tearing into the wealthy Cayman Islands chain, a popular scuba diving destination and banking center.
“It’s as bad as it can possibly get,” Justin Uzzell, 35, said by telephone from his fifth-floor refuge in Grand Cayman. “It’s a horizontal blizzard. The air is just foam.”
High winds prevented officials from assessing damage immediately. But Donnie Ebanks, deputy chairman of the British territory’s National Hurricane Committee, estimated that as many as half of Grand Cayman’s 15,000 homes were damaged.
Source: Yahoo (Ap) Read the whole story
Ivan making mas in the Caribbean… these are my people you know? It’s so hard to watch everyone suffering like this. My mother was living in Cayman up to last year, and we still have friends there….
Pray for the people in the path of this storm… Mama Oya (Mother of Hurricanes) and Baba Sango (Heepa Baba! Awo Kabeysi! Awo Kabyesi!) (Orisa of Thunder and Lightning) are taking no prisoners this year…
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