PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos — Hurricane Ike slammed into the Turks and Caicos on Saturday as a ferocious Category 4 hurricane, raking the low-lying island chain with shrieking winds as people hunkered down at home or in emergency shelters.
As the massive gray wall of clouds descended on the islands, shopkeepers and homeowners in the city of Providenciales frantically covered windows with plywood and boats were hauled ashore or secured with multiple anchors.
“I am very, very nervous,” said John Moore, a fishing boat captain, as he tied down his 61-foot vessel in a Providenciales cove. “It looks like it might go right over us, so that’s not a good picture.”
The outer-bands of the hurricane brought fierce, palm-bending winds and a scattering of rain. Still, people lingered in the darkened streets or outside a couple of convenience stores that stayed open for last-minute shoppers. People entered a makeshift shelter in a vocational school in the Five Cays neighborhood, a poor area that experienced heavy flooding during Hanna.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said that Ike’s eye was “near or over the Turks and Caicos” late Saturday. The center’s Web site showed hurricane force winds battering the island. Ike was moving west-southwest about 15 mph with maximum sustained winds were 135 mph.
Desiree Adams, along with 11 members of her family, could hear the storm’s powerful winds howling through the storm shutters of her Grand Turk home as Ike hit. The power was out, but they had water and food and battery-powered lanterns if necessary.
“We’re all just laying down looking up at the dark ceiling and talking,” Adams, a personal adviser to the island chain’s chief minister for tourism issues, said by cell phone.
Grand Turk, the capital of the Turks and Caicos, is about six miles long, and home to about 3,000 people. Several hundred evacuated before the storm. It has little natural protection from the sea and expected storm surge, but Adams said she and her family were not afraid.
“We live by faith here,” she said. “We believe in Jesus Christ, so a lot of praying is going forth. There is going to be damage, no doubt, to infrastructure but that we can replace over time.”
Low-lying Turks and Caicos and the neighboring Bahamas are vulnerable to flooding from rain and storm surge.
Forecasters said Ike was expected to reach the northern coast of eastern Cuba tonight or early Monday. Cuba’s government warned people to be ready to take emergency action, but hotels said they had not yet started evacuating foreign guests.
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