Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in Cuba

Hurricane Sandy made landfall on Thursday just west of Santiago de Cuba in southern Cuba, where residents boarded over windows and cleared drainage gutters ahead of the strengthening storm that had roared across Jamaica and left two dead in the Caribbean.

The US National Hurricane Centre said the storm hit Cuba with maximum sustained winds of 183km/h. The Miami centre said that Sandy, which had strengthened to a category 2 hurricane, was located just inland over southeastern Cuba and moving north, northeast at 24km/h, and is expected to remain a hurricane as it moves through the Bahamas.

The 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was expected to pass to the west of the US naval base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, where pretrial hearings were being held for a suspect in the deadly 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole off Yemen. The military warned the 5,500 people living on the US base to be ready for the storm. Officials said there was no threat to the 166 prisoners.

The hurricane centre said after Cuba, Sandy would pass over the Bahamas. It might bring tropical storm conditions along the southeastern Florida coast, the Upper Keys and Florida Bay by Friday morning.

Cuba’s Communist government, known for its quick response to natural disasters, announced the evacuation of about 450 tourists from beach resorts near Santiago, according to Cuban state media, though hotel workers told reporters they were not expecting any major problems.

Sandy “is a complex of strong rains, very intense,” said civil defence Colonel Miguel Angel Puig, adding that the rains could affect 200,000 people in Cuba.

The US hurricane centre had said Sandy is expected to produce total rainfall of 6 to 12 inches across Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic and eastern Cuba.

“These rains may produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain,” the centre said.

Eastern Cuba is mountainous and home to independent and state farms growing yucca, sugar, corn, coffee and fruit, among other crops.

Fishermen on the Gulf of Guaranayabo, which Manzanillo is located, moved their boats to safer ground.

People in Manzanillo, a city of 132,000 some 750 kilometres east of Havana, said they were worried about the impact, particularly after a wet summer that left sub-soils saturated.

“Given the condition of my house, I don’t know if it will withstand the force of a hurricane, but we are prepared,” said Emiliano Lopez, a 62-year-old who lives near Manzanillo’s seaside boulevard.

In Santiago, Cuba’s second largest city, tourist hotels prepared by getting generators ready and closing off some outdoor spaces and pools. Guests were being kept informed, but there were no evacuations other than from the beach resorts. Heavy rain was already falling late on Wednesday night.

“We’re well prepared for the storm,” said Mayte Cuesta, an employee of the Hotel Melia Santiago. “It will affect us, but we don’t think there is any danger.”

As Sandy crossed over Jamaica on Wednesday an elderly man was killed by a boulder that crashed into his clapboard house, police said. In southwestern Haiti, a woman died in the town of Camp Perrin after she was swept away by a river she was trying to cross, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of the country’s civil protection office.

Jamaican authorities closed the island’s international airports and police ordered 48-hour curfews in major towns to keep people off the streets and deter looting. Cruise ships changed their itineraries to avoid the storm, which made landfall Wednesday afternoon near the capital, Kingston.

In some southern towns on Jamaica, several crocodiles were caught in rushing floodwaters that carried them out of their homes in mangrove thickets. One big croc took up temporary residence in a family’s front yard in the city of Portmore.

Stranded business travellers and a smattering of locals rode out the hurricane in hotels clustered along a strip in Kingston’s financial district. Some read prayer books or novels, while others watched movies or communicated with loved ones on computers.