PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba – Packing ferocious winds and whipping up monstrous waves, Hurricane Ivan’s eye brushed Cuba’s sparsely populated western tip as a treacherous Category 5 storm – the most powerful – and barreled north toward the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Ivan, one of the strongest storms on record, hammered Grand Cayman with wind gusts up to 200 mph before reaching Cuba. The storm has killed at least 68 people across the Caribbean.
The wall of Ivan’s eye clipped the tip of Cuba about 6:45 p.m. as it moved through the Yucatan Channel on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, the island’s top meteorologist reported. The slow-moving storm, carrying 160 mph winds, hit Cuba hours after President Fidel Castro stopped to discuss preparations in Pinar del Rio city.
Castro vowed not to accept any hurricane aid from the United States. “We won’t accept a penny from them,” the Cuban leader said.
“The hurricane before this they offered $50,000, an insignificant amount,” he said referring to aid the U.S. government offered after Hurricane Charley. “Even if they offered all that was necessary – $100 million, $200 million, we would not accept. We can recuperate on our own.”
As the hurricane’s western edge drenched fields in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province, 20-foot-tall waves still were slamming the sea wall at the port in George Town, Grand Cayman, the wealthy British territory that is a popular scuba diving destination and offshore banking center.
On Grand Cayman, houses had been reduced to piles of plywood. A hangar at the airport in George Town had its roof blown off. Officials said the airport was not functioning and planes were being turned away.
The only signs of activity on the ground were animals congregating on higher ground.
Officials instituted a curfew in from dusk to dawn, and the government is setting up soup kitchens to help feed the public.
In Cuba, despite Castro’s bravado, residents said they feared for their lives.
“The wind blew like it was the end of the world,” said Odalys Lorenzo, a community official at a shelter in southwest Cuba. With Hurricane Charley, people thought they would lose all their possessions, but “with this one, they were afraid of losing their lives,” he said.
Ivan swirled toward cropland that produces Cuba’s famed cigars, a region still recovering from the effects last month of Hurricane Charley. But planting doesn’t begin until next month, and what remains of the January harvest are protected in curing houses, officials said.
About 1.3 million Cubans were evacuated from particularly vulnerable areas.
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