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Caribbean braces for Hurricane Dean

Category 4 storm was to hit Jamaica today.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 19, 2007

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Alarmed tourists jammed Caribbean airports for flights out of Hurricane Dean's path Saturday as the monster storm began sweeping past the Dominican Republic and Haiti and threatened to engulf Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

In Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, a boy was pulled into the ocean and drowned while watching waves kicked up by the Category 4 storm strike an oceanfront boulevard, the emergency operations center reported.

In Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which stand directly in Dean's path, fear gripped many islanders and tourists alike.

Bracing for the storm to hit today, Jamaica began evacuating people to more than 1,000 shelters nationwide. People jammed supermarkets and hardware stores in the capital of Kingston to stock up on supplies.

Resident Elaine Russell said she was preparing for Dean remembering Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

"I can't take it," she said. "The storm is bad enough but it's what happens afterward - there's no light, no water."

Before dawn, tourists began lining up outside the Montego Bay airport in western Jamaica to book flights out. The storm was expected to bring 155 mph winds and as much as 20 inches of rain.

The storm was expected to clip Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and enter the Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

As of 11 p.m. Saturday, Dean was near latitude 16.2 N, longitude 71.7 W or 360 miles east-southeast of Kingston, and about 170 miles south-southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was moving west at 17 mph and had maximum sustained winds near 145 mph.

President Bush, who received two briefings at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, signed a prelandfall disaster declaration, allowing the federal government to move in people, equipment and supplies in case Dean hits the state.

[Last modified August 19, 2007, 02:07:55]