CUBA NEWS
Yahoo!

Britain pledges hurricane aid to Cuba

LONDON, 14 (AFP) - Britain pledged emergency aid to Cuba as Hurricane Ivan, which has killed at least 71 people in the Caribbean, left part of the island battered and hurtled on towards the United States coast.

"Initial reports suggest that it has only affected the far west and south west of the island, which had been evacuated," International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said in a statement in parliament.

"There are reports of flooding," Benn said. "We are ready to provide assistance if required."

Benn also told the House of Commons that there were unconfirmed reports of loss of life and injury on the Cayman Islands, with 95 percent of homes there having suffered roof damage.

He announced that plastic sheeting, cots and water purification equipment should be shipped to Grand Cayman in the next 24 hours to help authorities there cope with the chaos.

The spice island of Grenada was hardest hit by Ivan, with at least 37 people killed last week, the Panamerican Health Organization said.

As many as 90 percent of all buildings were damaged or destroyed, and between 5,000 and 8,000 of the island's 100,000 inhabitants were still living in shelters, officials said.

Britain has already sent plastic sheeting and water containers to Grenada and offcials from Benn's department are in Jamaica assessing the island's needs after it lost 21 people.

British officials hope to visit Grand Cayman on Wednesday.

Cuban President Fidel Castro has said he would not accept any aid from the United States to repair damage caused by the hurricane.

"We won't accept a penny from them," the communist leader said Monday on state television.

Deadly Hurricane Ivan barrels toward US coast after slamming Cuba

MIAMI, 14 (AFP) - Hurricane Ivan barreled into the Gulf of Mexico toward the US coast after slamming western Cuba on a devastating rampage that killed more than 70 people across the Caribbean.

Tens of thousands of people were told to evacuate their homes along some 800 kilometers (500 miles) of US coastline as the powerful storm threatened western Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The ferocious storm was expected to land early Thursday along the northern US Gulf Coast, somewhere between New Orleans, Louisiana and Pensacola, Florida, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center.

Because Ivan's powerful winds reach 410 kilometers (260 miles) from the center of the hurricane, the landfall would affect a large swath of land.

If the storm veers of its predicted track, it could also hit parts of Florida, a southeastern US state still mopping up from the ravages wrought by hurricanes Charley and Frances over the past month.

At 2100 GMT, Ivan's center was about 600 kilometers (370 miles) south-southeast of the Mississippi river.

It lost some strength and was downgraded a notch after hitting the western tip of Cuba Monday, but was still packing ferocious winds of 225 kilometers per hour (140 mph), and could regain category five strength, forecasters said.

As the mayor of low-lying New Orleans urged residents to seek shelter on higher ground, officials recalled that the far less powerful Hurricane Betsy had killed 110 people and left the city under more than two meters (seven feet) of water in 1965.

Schools shut down and residents along the threatened areas boarded up their homes and bought emergency supplies, while military bases deployed personnel, planes and ships to safety.

Florida, Louisiana and Alabama were under a state of emergency and Mississippi joined them in ordering evacuations as Ivan roared toward the US coast after wreaking havoc across the Caribbean, from Grenada to Cuba.

Its latest rampage was in Cuba, where it raged for three hours late Monday after the eye slammed over Cape San Antonio at the island's western tip, 350 kilometers (220 miles) west of Havana.

Hundreds of homes, fishing and farm installations were damaged as roofs were torn off, trees were felled and mudslides cut off some communities.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba, which had lost five lives to Hurricane Charley last month.

In the Cayman Islands, which were hit Sunday, dozens of people were missing, and the British territory remained under a state of emergency, officials said. Many homes were uninhabitable due to damage or flooding, and some roads were blocked.

The tiny spice island of Grenada was the worst hit by Ivan, with at least 37 people killed last week, and as many as 90 percent of all buildings damaged or destroyed, officials said.

Thousands of the island's 100,000 inhabitants were still living in shelters, they said.

In Jamaica, police put the death toll at 21 after powerful winds and heavy rain from Ivan tore down houses, felled trees and destroyed roads in the nation of 2.7 million.

The hurricane was also blamed for five deaths in Venezuela, four in the Dominican Republic, three in Haiti and one in Tobago.

Aid for the devastated nations started pouring, with the European Commission (news - web sites) announcing it was sending 1.5 million euros (1.8 million dollars) and Canada pledging Canada 500,000 Canadian dollars (385,000 US).

Caribbean leaders were to hammer out a regional disaster plan for hurricane-hit Grenada and Jamaica at an emergency meeting Wednesday in Trinidad.

But as the assistance was on its way, weary Caribbean residents cast a wary eye at Tropical Storm Jeanne, which was gaining strength as it headed for the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and was expected to become a hurricane by Wednesday.

Hurricane warnings were issued for both US territories. Forecasters said Jeanne was expected to pass over St. Croix by early Wednesday on its way to Puerto Rico, bringing rainfall of up to 25 centimeters (10 inches) and storm surges of up to 1.2 meters (four feet) above normal tides.

Storm warnings also were in place for the Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Mexico, meanwhile heaved a sigh of relief as Ivan spared its Yucatan peninsula, but kept an eye out for Javier, another powerful hurricane that raged in the Pacific off its western coast.

Hurricane Ivan Drenches Western Cuba

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press Writer. Tue Sep 14, 3:40 PM ET.

PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - Hurricane Ivan whipped western Cuba with 160 mph winds, ripping the roofs of tobacco barns and houses and drenching fields before moving into the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, threatening offshore oil rigs and setting off an exodus along the U.S. coast.

Five Florida counties and a Louisiana parish urged or ordered residents to leave Tuesday as Ivan spun out of the Caribbean. One of the fiercest storms ever recorded in the region, Ivan cut a deadly swath through Grenada, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, killing at least 68 people.

In Mexico, hundreds of people abandoned fishing settlements on the Yucatan peninsula and the resort city of Cancun opened shelters and closed beaches. Cozumel island, a dive resort known for its lumbering sea turtles, shut its airport and halted cruise ship arrivals.

A hurricane watch was posted for a 420-mile-long swath from St. Marks in the Florida Panhandle to New Orleans as forecasters said Ivan's bands of winds and rain may begin coming ashore in the United States as early as Wednesday.

Ivan gave Cuba a taste of its monstrous power Monday evening, with the wall of the storm's eye brushing over the island's sparsely populated western tip - the heartland of Cuba's famed cigar industry.

An Associated Press reporter who drove through the rural region Tuesday found roads submerged in water, tobacco fields drenched and power lines downed. A tobacco curing house had part of its zinc roof pulled away. Hardly a person was in sight in the evacuated area.

Heavy flooding was reported along the island's southwestern coast, and Cuba's official Prensa Latina news service reported that high winds tore roofs off buildings and ripped trees up by their roots

But there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

"We are so relieved," said Miguel Rivero, a 42-year-old restaurant worker in Havana, about 100 miles to the northeast. "If it had come through here it would have been a true disaster."

Moraima Santos, a 60-year-old Havana housewife was terrified when early projections showed Ivan heading much closer to the capital of 2.2 million. On Tuesday, she said, "We are so happy that the monster has left."

Cuba's tobacco crop was safe, according to top grower Alejandro Robaina. Planting season doesn't begin until next month and remnants of January's harvest are protected in curing houses. Tobacco is the communist-run island's third-largest export, producing an average of 150 million cigars worth about $240 million a year. Sugar, the lead export, was spared since much of the cane is grown in the east.

During the worst of Ivan's wrath on western Cuba, sustained winds of 120 mph and gusts of 162 mph battered the provincial capital of Pinar del Rio. Fifteen-foot waves crashed into the coast of the Isla de Juventud - or Isle of Youth, southwest of the main island - where ham radio operators reported trees and power lines down.

The storm was sprawling enough to attack two islands at once earlier Monday. Its western fringe soaked Cuba as waves 20-foot tall slammed the sea wall at the port in George Town, Grand Cayman, some 250 miles away.

Ivan tore away part of a hotel on Cayman's famed Seven Mile Beach, as seen in a fly-over by AP reporters in a charter aircraft Monday.

Some 1.3 million of Cuba's 11.3 million people were evacuated from the western region still recovering from Hurricane Charley. All national and international airports were closed until Wednesday.

Whatever the damage, Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) said he would not accept any aid from the United States. "We won't accept a penny from them," the Cuban leader said Monday on state television.

"The hurricane before this they offered $50,000," he said of a U.S. government offer after Charley hit. "Even if they offered all that was necessary - $100 million, $200 million, we would not accept."

At 11 a.m., Ivan was centered about 435 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 470 miles south of Panama City Beach. It was moving north-northwest at 8 mph.

Authorities in Louisiana's St. Charles Parish, located just outside of New Orleans and split by the Mississippi River, called Tuesday for a mandatory evacuation of the parish's 49,000 residents. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggested residents "seek higher ground."

In trading Tuesday, Ivan was blamed for a rise in crude future prices, as analysts warned that no matter where in the Gulf of Mexico it went, it was sure to threaten some of the many oil rigs and platforms that lie off the Gulf states.

By 1 p.m., October Nymex crude was up 70 cents to $44.58 a barrel, while the October Brent contract traded on London's International Petroleum Exchange was up 79 cents at $41.85 a barrel.

Several rigs in the gulf of been evacuated and production halted as Ivan makes its way north.

Ivan has killed at least 15 people in Jamaica, 39 in Grenada, five in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados, four in the Dominican Republic and three in Haiti.

In Grand Cayman, the storm flung huge pleasure yachts up on land and toppled trees three stories high. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed.

"The island looks like a war zone," said Diana Uzzell, a business manager on the island, the largest in the Caymans chain.

The low-lying island of Grand Cayman appeared like it has been entirely underwater at some point during the storm, AP reporters on the overflight Monday saw.

Many hotels were damaged, with torn-off roof tiles and roofs, the overflight showed. The second floor of the Divi Beach Club Colony Resort was torn away by the storm. Debris blanketed the Caymans.

Some houses were reduced to piles of splintered wood. A hangar at the airport had its roof blown off. Officials said the airport was open only for restricted flights.

From the plane, the only signs of activity on the ground were animals congregating on higher ground. All trees were denuded, their leaves shorn off by the storm, and some century-old trees three stories high were torn up by their roots.

Tourism director Pilar Bush said up to half of the 15,000 homes on Grand Cayman had suffered significant damage that made them inhabitable.

The last Category 5 storm to make landfall in the Caribbean was Hurricane David, which killed more than 1,000 people and devastated the Dominican Republic in 1979.

Only three Category 5 storms are known to have hit the United States, the last Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It killed 43 people and causing more than $30 billion in damage in south Florida.

Associated Press reporters Anita Snow and Andrea Rodriguez in Cuba; Stevenson Jacobs in Jamaica, Gretchen Allen in Houston, Jay Ehrhart in the Cayman Islands and Peter Prengaman flying above the Cayman Islands contributed to this report.

On the Net:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov http://www.wunderground.com/tropical

Maradona given green light to leave for Cuba

BUENOS AIRES, 14 (AFP) - Football legend Diego Maradona has been granted his wish to travel to Cuba to undergo treatment for his cocaine addiction, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.

The 43-year-old had wanted to go but his ex-wife and daughters challenged that believing he would not get the treatment he needed. However with the five days allowed for them to appeal an earlier court decision having expired the 1986 World Cup winner is free to go, though the court ruled that he could only be treated in The Mental Health Centre (CENSAM) in Havana and nowhere else.

"Diego Maradona will leave for Cuba depending on the weather conditions and when his state of health permits him to," said his lawyer Hector Leguizamon. Only on Saturday Maradona had to be rushed to hospital with high blood pressure and a high fever, having almost died earlier in the year because of heart and lung problems.

FBI ends inquiry on possible 7th Cuban rafter

Sep. 12 (AP) - The FBI has closed its investigation into whether a seventh person was aboard a boat that bought six Cubans to Mustang Island last month.

The voyage: The group left Manzanillo, Cuba, on a raft June 25, the Border Patrol has said, and apparently purchased a boat, water and fuel in the Cayman Islands five days later. They had planned to travel through Mexico to the border and then sneak across the Rio Grande, but the boat was blown off course by Hurricane Charley and Tropical Storm Bonnie.

The landing: The 30-foot boat washed up on Mustang Island on Aug. 25. Two of the five men found aboard were sent to Dallas to stay with relatives to await asylum hearings. Three other men were sent to stay with family in Miami.

The investigation: The sixth person, Magali Atilenia Araujo Cruz, told Border Patrol agents that seven people had been aboard the boat. But FBI agents have been unable to determine that a seventh person existed. Ms. Araujo Cruz, who was detained pending the investigation, has been reunited with her daughter in Miami.

PRINTER FRIENDLY