Residents make their way among fallen trees following Hurricane Ike in Holguin, Cuba, yesterday. Hurricane Ike roared ashore south of Cuba's densely populated capital of ageing buildings yesterday after tearing across the island nation, ravaging homes, killing at least four people and forcing 1.2 million to evacuate. - AP

HAVANA (AP):

Hurricane Ike roared across Cuba, west of the densely populated capital's ageing buildings yesterday, after tearing down the length of the island nation, ravaging homes, killing at least four people and forcing 1.2 million to evacuate.

Residents in Texas and northern Mexico braced for a weekend hit from Ike, which has already killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean.

Winds howled and it rained heavily across Havana, where streets were empty. Towering waves broke over the graceful Malecon seaside promenade, which police had barricaded off the previous evening. Many of the historic apartment buildings along its length are in poor repair and vulnerable to collapse.

Police spread out across the city to halt all but emergency and official traffic. Roadways were strewn with tree branches and rocks, and the rubble from crumbling balconies littered sidewalks. Navigation was banned in Havana Bay, its usually placid surface stirred up by white-capped waves.

Teresa Tejeda, scared to stay in her dilapidated Old Havana home, evacuated with several hundred other elderly people to a government shelter.

"My house has really bad walls and I feel much more secure here," said Tejeda, who is in her 70s.

Cuba, which has carried out well-executed evacuations for years, ordered hundreds of thousands of people more than a 10th of its 11 million people to seek safety with friends and relatives or at government shelters.

State television reported that Ike killed four people in Cuba, the island's first storm deaths this year. Two men were killed removing an antenna from a roof, a woman died when her home collapsed and a man was killed by a falling tree.

No one was killed when Gustav tore across western Cuba the same area Ike was pounding yesterday as a monstrous Category-4 hurricane on August 30, damaging 100,000 homes and causing billions of dollars in damage. That was largely because 250,000 people were evacuated.

Evacuations are not mandatory in Cuba except for pregnant women and small children. But in an authoritarian state, few people would think to ignore the Government's advice and state news media make an example of the few who pay the ultimate price when they fail to move out.

Scared to stay at home

Police told Niyel Rodriguez, 21, that she had to move to a shelter with her 19-day-old daughter Chanel. She huddled yesterday with 109 expectant and new mothers and their children in a wing of an Old Havana maternity hospital converted into a shelter. Obstetricians and nurses were on hand in case anyone needed help.

"They came looking for me yesterday and brought me here in a patrol car," Rodriguez said, "I probably would have been scared to stay at home with my little one, and here they take good care of us. They give us breakfast, lunch and dinner and everything we need for the babies."

State television said officials had taken measures to protect tourists at vulnerable seaside hotels, including about 10,000 foreigners at the Varadero resort, east of Havana.

Spanish tourists Jose Luis and Avelina Alonso were spending the last day of their Cuban vacation holed up in the lobby of an Old Havana hotel.