KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) - Deadly Hurricane Ivan ripped Jamaica with powerful winds, torrential rains and huge waves on Saturday, tearing away houses and washing out roads before heading toward the tiny Cayman Islands and Cuba.
By Horace HelpsWith winds of 155 mph and a death toll already at 27, Ivan gave Jamaica's 2.7 million people a small, last-minute reprieve when its center took a sudden westward turn.
That kept the most catastrophic winds off the south coast and out of the capital, Kingston. But the verdant, mountainous island still got hammered.
As fierce winds lashed Kingston, sporadic shooting broke out and robbers held up emergency workers at gunpoint. A doctor was shot and taken to a hospital.
Trees and poles crashed down in the city, some hitting houses. Ravines overflowed and flooded streets.
Large waves pounded the coast around St. Thomas in the southeast and a storm surge tore away at least two houses, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency said. Elsewhere, the surge washed away roads.
Ivan, which has killed 27 people in a rampage across the Caribbean, strengthened when it reached Jamaica with winds of 155 mph, just short of qualifying as a rare, top-level Category 5 hurricane.
Despite the brief wobble in its west-northwesterly track, Ivan remained on course to hit the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British colony northwest of Jamaica, and Cuba. It also threatens Florida with its third big hurricane strike in a month, after Charley and Frances.
Evacuations were under way in the Florida Keys, where officials ordered tourists and the 80,000 residents out of the 100-mile-long island chain.
Facing one of nature's worst storms, Jamaica caught a break. Just 30-40 miles off shore and drawing a bead on Kingston, Ivan's center suddenly headed west for a few hours, avoiding a direct hit on the sprawling capital, where tens of thousands of people live in flimsy shanties in the slums.
"It wobbled and it spared Jamaica," National Hurricane Center meteorologist Jennifer Pralgo said. "We don't know why it wobbled but it wobbled. It kept the worst of the storm offshore but they did get hurricane-force winds and there are reports of serious damage."
Forecasters had no immediate wind-speed measurements because many wind instruments were blown away by the storm, she said.
Half a million Jamaicans, more than on one-sixth of the country's population, were urged to evacuate low-lying areas as Ivan approached. But many held out, vowing to protect their homes from looters.
In the Cayman Islands, home to about 45,000 people and a key offshore financial center, authorities told coastal dwellers to flee battering waves and an 8-foot (2.4-meter) storm surge as Ivan's wobbly track put Grand Cayman, the largest of the territory's three islands, in greater danger.
"All three islands must therefore be prepared for the worst-case scenario," Donovan Ebanks, deputy chairman of the National Hurricane Committee, said.
At 8 a.m. EDT, Ivan's center was just south of the western tip of Jamaica, about 60 miles south of Montego Bay, at latitude 17.7 north and longitude 78.4 west, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was moving west-northwest at 8 mph. Ivan's sustained winds weakened slightly, to 150 mph early on Saturday, but it was on the edge of Category 5 status, the strongest hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Ivan has killed at least 27 people, most of them on the devastated spice island of Grenada, which remained without power or water and under a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
The International Federation of the Red Cross estimated 60,000 of the island's 90,000 people are homeless, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency.
The State Department said it would evacuate U.S. citizens on Saturday.
In addition to 17 deaths in Grenada and one in Jamaica, four people died in Venezuela, four in the Dominican Republic and one in Tobago.
The hurricane center's long-range forecast, which has a large margin of error, put Ivan in Cuba by Monday, and off Florida's west coast, threatening areas struck last month by Hurricane Charley, by Tuesday.
The evacuation order for the Florida Keys was the third big evacuation in Florida in a month. Charley killed more than 20 people and caused insured damage of $7.4 billion after hitting southwest Florida on Aug 13. Frances killed 19 people and caused damages of $2 billion to $4 billion.
