25632: (news) Chamberlain: Hurricane Dennis hits Cuba, 18 dead in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Anthony Boadle

     HAVANA, July 8 (Reuters) - Hurricane Dennis slammed into central Cuba
on Friday after killing 18 people in Haiti and was on track for the U.S.
Gulf of Mexico, where oil companies began evacuating workers from rigs.
     The storm, with 145-mph (235 kph) winds and driving rain, ripped up
trees and downed electricity lines in the city of Cienfuegos as it roared
across Cuba's south coast.
     Cienfuegos resident Jorge Martinez, contacted by telephone, said the
howling wind was gaining strength in the city of 160,000, where power was
already down. "It blew out a window in my apartment building as it was made
of hay," Martinez said.
     The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the eye of Dennis would head
into the eastern Gulf on Friday evening and skirt the Florida Keys on
Saturday. It was the strongest Atlantic hurricane to form this early in the
season since records began in 1851.
     There were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba, whose Communist
authorities suspended all school classes and evacuated 656,144 people from
the storm's path.
     But in southern Haiti, many people fled their flooded homes and the
mayor of Grand-Goave, Marie Hingreed Nelchoix, said 17 people had died in
and around her city, including 15 thrown into a swollen river when a bridge
collapsed.
     Earlier officials had reported that a young man was killed when a tree
fell on a house near Les Cayes.
     Dennis was expected to brush past the Florida Keys early on Saturday
and pass close to Gulf oil and gas fields before going ashore on Sunday
night along the Florida Panhandle, which was hammered by Hurricane Ivan
last September.
     Chevron Corp said it evacuated all workers from the central and
eastern Gulf where oil and gas rigs could be at risk. Shell Oil Co. said it
also evacuated workers from Gulf operations as a precaution. The area
produces a quarter of U.S. crude and natural gas.
     Oil prices were near $61 a barrel as markets shrugged off the impact
of bomb blasts in London and focused on the impact of Dennis, but traders
said the price slipped in late trading on profit-taking and on word Dennis
may be weakening.
     Cuban forecasters said the hurricane was expected to barrel through
Cuba and head out into the Florida Straits anywhere between Havana and the
beach resort of Varadero,
     At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), the National Hurricane Center said Dennis
was near Cienfuegos, 125 miles (205 kms) southeast of Havana and moving to
the northwest at 17 mph (28 kph).
     Some weakening was forecast as the storm moves over Cuba, but Dennis
was expected to remain a major hurricane as it bore down on the United
States on Friday night, it said.
     U.S. authorities ordered residents to evacuate Key West and the lower
part of the Florida Keys, an island chain connected to the southern tip of
mainland Florida by a single highway.
     NASA decided on Friday to leave space shuttle Discovery on its launch
pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, but continued to watch Dennis closely. A
decision to roll Discovery back to its hangar would have delayed the
scheduled Wednesday launch, the first shuttle mission since the Columbia
disaster in 2003.
     Dennis drenched Jamaica on Thursday, triggering mudslides that blocked
roads as the core of the storm moved north of the mountainous Caribbean
island of 2.6 million. About 3,000 people moved to storm shelters in
south-central Jamaica.
     It also soaked the Cayman Islands, a tiny British territory and
banking center with 43,000 residents. Hurricane Ivan damaged or destroyed
70 percent of the buildings on Grand Cayman Island in September.

  (Additional reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince, Michael
Christie in Miami, Michael Peltier in Tallahassee and Irene Klotz at Cape
Canaveral)




 REUTERS