CAMAGUEY, Cuba — Hurricane Ike hit Cuba after roaring across low-lying islands Sunday, tearing apart houses, wiping out crops and worsening floods in Haiti that have already killed 316 people.
Ike began its sweep across Cuba late Sunday night as a Category 3 hurricane and could hit Havana head-on. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans evacuated to shelters or higher ground.
To the north, residents of the Florida Keys fled up a narrow highway, fearful that the “extremely dangerous” hurricane could hit them Tuesday.
At least 58 people died as Ike’s winds and rain swept Haiti on Sunday. It was too early to know of deaths on other islands where the most powerful winds were still blowing.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted Ike’s eye would make landfall early today and could hit Havana, the capital of 2 million people with many vulnerable old buildings, by tonight.
Forecasts show Ike skirting Key West early Tuesday on a trek to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, slowly strengthening on its way to a landfall late in the week somewhere between the Florida Panhandle and the Texas coast.
And once again, New Orleans — still recovering from the weaker-than-expected Gustav — is squarely in the crosshairs.
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepared for the possibility of more havoc only days after a historic, life-saving evacuation of more than 2 million people from Hurricane Gustav.
“Our citizens are weary and they’re tired and they have spent a lot of money evacuating,” Nagin worried. “It will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav.”
Many more Haitian lives were threatened as Ike’s downpours topped flooding from Hanna, Gustav and Fay. Officials said they would have to open an overflowing dam, inundating more homes and possibly causing lasting damage to key farming areas.
The Mirebalais bridge collapsed in the floods, cutting off the last land route into Gonaives, where half the homes were already under water when Ike hit and further complicating relief efforts. Many Haitians took to their roofs to escape floodwaters.
Witnesses in Cabaret said floodwaters rushed into homes in the middle of the night, crushing walls and reaching chest-high levels before receding Sunday morning and leaving everything caked in mud.
The rain had stopped by late afternoon, but authorities feared flooding could continue as water collecting in the mountains continued to run downhill.
As U.N. soldiers delivered aid to the parts of Gonaives they could still reach, scores of young men splashed alongside their boats, begging for help. One called out with a bullhorn: “Hey, hey, my friend. Give me some water.”
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