Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CARIBBEAN: Hurricane Ivan on Kill and Destroy Mission

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Sep 9 2004 (IPS) - Hurricane Ivan reached category five level – the most severe – Thursday as it raged through the heart of the Caribbean Sea on its way towards Jamaica and Cuba, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Venezuela, the Dutch Antilles and Colombia.

The eye of the storm, around 250 km from northwestern Venezuela, is 700 km from Jamaica but moving forward at a speed of 24 to 30 km an hour, packing winds up to 260 km an hour, the Venezuelan air force meteorological service reported.

Jamaica is preparing for the impact Friday, after which Ivan could continue on to the Cayman Islands, Cuba and even the southern U.S. state of Florida, “although it may weaken when it makes landfall. But its strength and intensity are fuelled by the warm temperatures of the water in the Caribbean at this time of year,” meteorological service spokeswoman Angel Graterol told IPS.

In a radio message, Jamaican Prime Minister Percival Patterson told Jamaicans “We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Let us pray for God’s care.”

Ivan formed at a latitude of about eight degrees north in the western Atlantic Ocean five days ago, as a category three storm. It then headed northwest, hitting Barbados with heavy winds and rainfall, and then Tobago, Trinidad’s “twin island”, where a pregnant woman was killed by a falling tree.

Ivan next pummelled the small island of Grenada, where it killed at least 12, and perhaps as many as 24 people, and damaged 85 to 90 percent of the country’s buildings.

Grenada’s Prime Minister Keith Mitchell declared a national disaster, and issued a plea for international aid for the reconstruction effort.

The island’s nutmeg industry, which accounts for 15 percent of exports, has been completely destroyed, he said.

The power and telecommunications services are down, and the island is facing security problems, because of damages to Saint George’s prison, which allowed some prisoners to escape, Mitchell told a Trinidad and Tobago radio station.

Barbados has sent a group of police officers to help restore order in Grenada, where looting has broken out.

Suspected to be among the prisoners who escaped are leftists serving life sentences for staging an October 1983 coup d’etat in which Marxist prime minister Maurice Bishop was killed. The turmoil at the time served as a pretext for the U.S. military invasion of the island.

On Tuesday, Ivan hit Venezuela’s northeastern states, where the beach tourism industry is at high season, with strong winds and heavy rain, and on Wednesday it raged past the central coast, forcing ports, airports and resort towns to shut down.

The storm was then upgraded to category four on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds of more than 160 km an hour creating waves up to six metres high.

Four people were killed in Venezuela, including a man who died when a wave crashed into his kiosk on the coast near Caracas. Others were injured as they attempted to save their boats, homes and belongings.

Dozens of houses were damaged or destroyed, and hundreds of people have been left homeless on the coast of northwestern Venezuela, despite the fact that the epicentre of the storm passed the country more than 200 km out to sea.

It also passed far away from the Dominican Republic, but four youngsters drowned when they were swept off a beach there by an enormous wave caused by Ivan Thursday.

The Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao were hit by heavy rains, “but we have registered no victims or major material damages,” Manuel Maduro told IPS from the offices of the Curacao newspaper La Prensa.

The peninsula of La Guajira, at the extreme northern tip of Colombia and Venezuela, received only moderate rainfall, and the coastal hamlets of the local Wayúu indigenous people were basically unaffected, according to reports.

Graterol said the storm was moving away from South America’s Caribbean coastline, on its way northwest to the Cayman Islands and Jamaica.

The U.S. National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida said the storm is growing in strength on its way to Jamaica, but that after it hits that island, it could drop in intensity to a level four hurricane by the time it reaches its next destination, perhaps western Cuba, on the weekend.

The Florida Keys have begun to be evacuated, due to predictions that the storm may hit the area on Sunday.

Ivan, the strongest hurricane of the season, is the third to crash through the region in less than a month. Charley wreaked havoc in Cuba, and both Charley and Frances hit Florida, causing an estimated 10 billion dollars worth of damages.

In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert, the most intense storm to pound the western hemisphere in the 20th century, left 300 dead in Caribbean nations and Mexico, and destroyed more than 10,000 homes in Jamaica alone.