Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
These two houses in the River View community of Papine, St. Andrew, are poised to fall into the Hope River following the erosion of their foundations.HAVANA, (Reuters):
Hurricane Dennis continued its rampage across the northern Caribbean killing 10 persons in central Cuba, just hours after leaving 22 dead in nearby Haiti. The monster hurricane is barrelling towards the Florida Keys and the United States Gulf Coast where oil workers and citizens evacuated in mass numbers.
Now a Category Four storm, with 145-mph (235 kph) winds and driving rain, Dennis ripped up trees and downed electricity lines in the city of Cienfuegos as it roared across Cuba's south coast where it left 10 people dead. An 18-month-old child was among those killed.
Cienfuegos resident Jorge Martinez, contacted by telephone, said the howling wind was gaining strength in the city of 160,000, where power was already down. "It blew out a window in my apartment building as if it was made of hay," Martinez said.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the eye of Dennis was headed into the eastern Gulf yesterday evening and was expected to skirt the Florida Keys today. It was the strongest Atlantic hurricane to form this early in the season since records began in 1851.
The Cuban Government suspended all school classes and evacuated more than 656,000 people from the storm's path.
flooded homes
But in southern Haiti, many people fled their flooded homes and the mayor of Grand-Goave, Marie Hingreed Nelchoix, said 17 people had died in and around her city, including 15 thrown into a swollen river when a bridge collapsed.
Earlier officials had reported that a young man was killed when a tree fell on a house near Les Cayes.
Dennis was expected to brush past the Florida Keys early today and pass close to Gulf oil and gas fields before going ashore tomorrow night along the Florida Panhandle, which was hammered by Hurricane Ivan last September.
