ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada – The most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean in nearly a decade killed at least 12 people in Grenada, damaged 90 percent its homes and destroyed a prison that left criminals running loose, officials said Wednesday. American students took precautions against looters.
Hurricane Ivan killed at least three more people in other countries and was expected to inflict more damage as its 140 mph winds churn toward Jamaica, Cuba and possibly the southern United States.
“We are terribly devastated … It’s beyond imagination,” Prime Minister Keith Mitchell told his people and the world – from aboard a British Royal Navy vessel that rushed to the rescue.
Mitchell, whose own home was flattened by Ivan, said 90 percent of homes on the island were damaged and he feared the death toll would rise.
“If you see the country today, it would be a surprise to anyone that we did not have more deaths than it appears at the moment,” Mitchell said.
Ivan pulverized concrete homes into piles of rubble and tore away hundreds of the island’s landmark red zinc roofs.
Students at St. George’s University, which overlooks the Grenadian capital, hid under mattresses or in bathrooms. “The pipes were whistling, the doors were vibrating, gusts were coming underneath the window,” said Sonya Lazarevic, a first-year student from New York.
“It looks like a landslide happened,” said another student, Nicole Organ, 21, of Toronto. “There are all these colors coming down the mountainside – sheets of metal, pieces of shacks, roofs came off in layers.”
She said that the danger didn’t end with the winds. Organ said she wandered downtown later and saw bands of machete-wielding men looting a hardware store.
Lazarevic said the mostly American student body was arming with knives, sticks and pepper spray for fear that looters would move into areas near the school.
“We don’t feel safe,” she said.
The storm strengthened even as it hit Grenada, becoming a Category 4, and got even stronger Wednesday, packing sustained winds of 140 mph with higher gusts as it headed across the Caribbean Sea and passed north of the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.
Grenada is known for the U.S. invasion that followed a coup, when American officials had determined Grenada’s airport was going to become a joint Cuban-Soviet base. Cuba said it was helping build the airport for civilian use. Nineteen Americans died in the fighting.
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