Thousands take cover as Ike smacks Turks and Caicos
Posted on Sunday, September 7, 2008
KEY WEST, Fla. — Hurricane Ike slammed into the Turks and Caicos on Saturday as a ferocious Category 4 storm, raking the low-lying island chain with shrieking winds as thousands hunkered down at home or in emergency shelters.
As the massive gray wall of clouds descended on the islands, shopkeepers and homeowners in the city of Providenciales frantically covered windows with plywood and boats were hauled ashore or secured with multiple anchors.
The outer bands of the storm produced fierce, palmbending winds and a scattering of rain. Still, people lingered in the darkened streets or outside a couple of convenience stores that stayed open for last-minute shoppers. People entered a makeshift shelter in a vocational school in the Five Cays neighborhood, a poor area that experienced heavy flooding during Hurricane Hanna.
Ike’s eye was centered near latitude 21. 2 north and longitude 70. 9 west about 60 miles east of Grand Turk Island at 10 p.m. CDT Saturday. It was moving west-southwest about 15 mph. The U. S. National Hurricane Center said the storm’s maximum sustained winds were 135 mph.
Center meteorologist Colin McAdie said the eye of Ike was expected to pass “near or over” the Turks and Caicos on Saturday night, to begin to affect the southeastern Bahamas by early today and eastern Cuba by tonight or early Monday.
Grand Turk, the capital of the Turks and Caicos, is about six miles long and home to about 3, 000 people. Several hundred evacuated before the storm.
Along Ike’s projected course stand Cuba’s two chief tourist centers: Varadero beach and Havana, the seaside capital of 2. 3 million people.
The governments of the Bahamas and Cuba issued hurricane warnings.
Forecasters say the storm likely will strengthen as it approaches southern Florida by Monday.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist issued a state of emergency declaration in advance of Ike, expected to reach the state Tuesday.
“This is a dangerous storm that continues to move to the west closer to Florida,” Crist said during a televised address to residents. “We have to remain vigilant. We have to remain focused.” Authorities urged visitors and tourists to leave the Florida Keys on Saturday with a phased-in evacuation for residents to begin today, said Monroe County sheriff ’s office spokesman Becky Herrin. About 78, 000 people live in the area and 15, 000 more tourists were expected this weekend.
The approach of the hurricane also raised alarm in Haiti, where aid officials feared it could worsen deadly flooding. And Cuba, still recovering from a devastating hit by Category 4 Hurricane Gustav last month, lies directly in Ike’s projected path.
To the east of Ike, Tropical Storm Josephine weakened into a tropical depression with sustained winds of 30 mph. The system was dissipating over the far eastern Atlantic about 855 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, the advisory said.
Cuba’s communist government warned people to prepare to take emergency action, but hotels along its northern coast said they had not started evacuating foreign guests.
U. S. military commanders at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in southeast Cuba were coordinating storm preparations and securing anything that the wind might carry, said Navy Petty Officer 1 st Class Robert Lamb. The U. S. base holds in hurricane-proof cells some 255 men suspected of links to the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Turks and Caicos Premier Michael Misick said his government opened a half-dozen shelters and had emergency food shipped in.
In the Bahamas the government urged tourists to evacuate the sparsely populated southeastern islands, and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force dispatched marines to take food and water to the eastern islands of Mayaguana and San Salvador.
Turks and Caicos, a British territory, was pummeled for four days by Hanna last week. It caused widespread flooding and some damage but did far worse when it drifted toward Haiti as a tropical storm, creating floods that had killed 167 people by Saturday.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna sped its way up the U. S. East Coast on Saturday after making landfall near the border of the Carolinas.
Hanna caused minimal damage to coastal areas of the Carolinas as it moved up the coast at 28 mph, dumping as much as 10 inches of rain, according to the U. S. National Hurricane Center. As of 10 p.m. CDT, Hanna was centered near latitude 40. 5 north and longitude 73. 4 west, or about 90 miles southwest of Long Island, and its maximum sustained winds blew about 50 mph.
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency for Hanna and Ike, which may hit the East Coast within days. The state’s Department of Crime Control and Public Safety advised people to store as much as five days’ worth of food and water and to stay off the roads during the storm. Information for this article was contributed by Ben Fox, Mike Melia, Johnathan M. Katz, Matt Sedensky, Brendan Farrington, Lisa Orkin, Sarah Larimer, Steve Szkotak, Melinda Deslatte and Brian Skoloff of The Associated Press; and by Demian McLean, Dan Hart, Nancy Kercheval and Gene Laverty of Bloomberg News.
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