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Dean rips islands, aims south of U.S.

The Category 4 drenches Haiti, pounds Jamaica and powers on.

A fisherman removes the engine from his boat in Kingston as the powerful Hurricane Dean approaches, poised to make a near-direct hit on the island after a deadly and destructive march across the eastern Caribbean.
	[AP photo]

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo] Young boys use an umbrella to resist the wind while walking at a street of Kingston during the pass of Hurricane Dean over Jamaica. [AP photo] A tree knocked down by the strong winds of Hurricane dean is shown in front of the Pegasus hotel in Kingston, Jamaica.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Hurricane Dean's enormous eye skidded just south of Jamaica on Sunday, but its ferocious outer bands still socked the island with 145 mph winds that shredded roofs, shattered windows and toppled trees.

Kingston lay in eerie darkness after the national power company shut off electricity in hopes of averting fires, while mudslides were reported in several areas of the country. A curfew was imposed to discourage looting.

The hurricane is now taking aim at Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where tourists slept on airport floors hoping to catch the last flights out of Cancun.

Dean, the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, could grow as it crosses the Caribbean's warm, deep waters to Category 5 strength, with winds topping 155 mph, before its expected landfall on Mexico's Gulf coast tonight or Tuesday morning, according to U.S. National Hurricane Center projections.

For all its might, Dean steered a relatively low-impact route on Saturday and Sunday through the maze of Caribbean islands. The death toll was comparatively low, at eight, and damage was far less than that caused by lesser storms.

Dean's torrential rains flooded neighborhoods in Kingston, where government crews had spent months trying to clear drains that have clogged and worsened flooding in previous storms. Local radio reports said more than a dozen fishermen were stranded on an island off Jamaica's coast. Police and troops patrolled Kingston's streets, urging residents to take shelter.

But many did not heed the advice and hundreds of tourists decided to weather the storm rather than go home.

About 20,000 tourists successfully fled the island ahead of Dean, but 14,000 visitors remained, according David Shields, deputy director of the Jamaica Tourist Board.

Only hours before Dean slammed into the island, people continued driving, some grocery stores remained open and pedestrians sauntered with umbrellas.

"Too much crime in Kingston. I'm not leaving my home," Paul Lyn said in Port Royal, east of Kingston.

Some of the few Jamaicans who were nervous about the storm herded into a downtown arena, where the squeals of children at play could be heard as the first raindrops pelted the island. Bad memories of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 - which hit Jamaica as a Category 4 storm that killed 17 people, left 18,000 homeless and was followed by widespread looting - prompted Patricia Riley to seek shelter with her children, ages 4 and 5.

"During the last hurricane, the roof lifted off my house," said Riley, who is being treated for cancer. "And so I didn't want to be there for that to happen again."

Before slapping Jamaica, the outer edges of Dean killed one person in the Dominican Republic and two in Haiti, where deforestation has created such an enormous flood risk that a tropical storm in September 2004 killed 3,000 people. Earlier in the weekend, Dean claimed four lives on the islands of St. Lucia, Dominica and Martinique.

While Dean was gathering strength last week, forecasters were predicting it might turn north, threatening Texas and portions of western Louisiana that are still recovering from Hurricane Rita in 2005. But new forecasts predict the storm will barrel straight west, grazing the Caymans, slamming into Yucatan, then crossing into the Gulf and again hitting Mexico, between Tampico and Veracruz, later in the week.

In the Cayman Islands, tourists were ordered to board shuttle buses for the airport. Hundreds of frantic vacationers lined up at ticket counters for special flights home. Cayman Islands Gov. Stuart Jack said all but 1,500 tourists were evacuated from the British territory by Sunday afternoon.

In Mexico, troops rushed to Yucatan to help with evacuations. Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state-run oil company, began evacuating thousands of workers and predicted that the storm could affect production. In Cancun - where Hurricane Wilma caused $2.6-billion in damage in October 2006 - luxury hotels were emptying out as many of the resort city's estimated 40,000 visitors hopped flights out of the country.

"We are not taking any chances with Hurricane Dean," said Felix Gonzalez, governor of Quintana Roo state, home of Cancun.

As of 11 p.m. Sunday, Dean was located near latitude 17.6 N, longitude 78.8 W or about 135 miles west-southwest of Kingston and was traveling west at 20 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

Information from McClatchy Newspapers, the New York Times and the Associated Press was used in this report.

Mexico targeted, Texas stocks up

Even with Hurricane Dean days away and its path uncertain, officials in sodden south Texas left little to chance Sunday, readying planes, gasoline and hundreds of buses to get residents out in a hurry.

Authorities passed out sandbags, evacuated inmates and opened emergency operations centers in a region still soaked from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin.

"We're preparing for Hurricane Dean just as if it is going to be direct hit," said Johnny Cavazos, the chief emergency director for Cameron County at the state's southernmost tip.

A state of emergency was declared in the resort town of South Padre Island. About 3,300 jail and prison inmates in the area were to be bused to correctional facilities elsewhere by Sunday night.

In Washington, R. David Paulison, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said up to 100,000 people might have to be evacuated from the state's southeastern coast and its immigrant shantytowns near the Mexican border. The storm is on course for Mexico, but could shift, Paulison said.

The level of preparation for Dean was influenced by memories of two destructive hurricanes that hammered the Gulf Coast region in 2005.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry mobilized the National Guard and search and rescue teams, shipped 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of gasoline to gas stations in the Rio Grande Valley, and got a pre-emptive federal disaster declaration from President Bush.

Even if Mexico gets the brunt of the storm, Texas could still get soaked by Dean's outer bands of heavy rain, Cavazos said.

[Last modified August 20, 2007, 01:05:59]