Hurricane Ivan damages 90% of homes in Grenada

The Category 5 hurricane is expected to reach Jamaica on Friday and Cuba by the weekend.
ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada (AP) -- Hurricane Ivan pummeled Grenada, Barbados and other islands with its devastating winds and rains, causing at least 15 deaths, before setting a direct course for Jamaica, Cuba and the hurricane-weary southern United States.
The most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean in 10 years damaged 90 percent of the homes in Grenada and destroyed a 17th-century stone prison that left criminals on the loose as looting erupted, officials said Wednesday.
Ivan strengthened early today to become a Category 5 on a scale of 5. It packed sustained winds of 160 mph with higher gusts as it passed north of the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.
Some escaped convicts included politicians jailed for 20 years for killings in a 1983 left-wing palace coup that led the United States to invade Grenada.
American medical students fearful of marauders armed themselves with knives and sticks.
"We are terribly devastated. ... It's beyond imagination," Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said from aboard a British Royal Navy vessel that rushed to the rescue.
Before it slammed into Grenada on Tuesday, Ivan gave Barbados and St. Vincent a pummeling, damaging hundreds of homes and cutting utilities. Thousands of people remained without electricity and water Wednesday.
Deaths
In Tobago, officials reported a 32-year-old pregnant woman died when a 40-foot palm tree fell into her home, pinning her to her bed.
In Venezuela, a 32-year-old man died after battering waves engulfed a kiosk on the northern coast.
A 75-year-old Canadian woman was found drowned in a canal swollen by floodwaters in Barbados. Neighbors said the Toronto native, who had lived in Barbados for 30 years, braved the storm to search for her cat.
Details on the extent of the death and destruction in Grenada did not emerge until Wednesday because the storm cut all communications with the country of 100,000 people, and halted radio transmissions on the island.
Mitchell confirmed that prison escapees included some of the 17 people jailed for life for killings during a 1983 Marxist coup, but he didn't know who they were or if they included former Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard.
Mitchell, whose own home was flattened, said 90 percent of houses on the island were damaged and he feared the death toll would rise. He said much of the country's agriculture had been destroyed, including the key nutmeg crop.
"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.
Within hours, Grenada's Police Commissioner Roy Bedaau raised the death toll to 12, in an interview with Voice of Barbados radio, but he provided no details.
1983 U.S. invasion
Grenada is known as a major producer of nutmeg, and drew worldwide attention for the U.S. invasion that followed the 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 and a disputed number of others that the United States put at 45 Grenadians and 24 Cubans.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said virtually every major building in St. George's has suffered structural damage. Grenada's once-quaint capital boasted English Georgian and French provincial buildings.
The United Nations is sending a disaster team, Eckhard said in New York City. The Caribbean disaster response agency, based in Barbados, said its team arrived Wednesday afternoon along with U.S. aid and Pan American Health Organization officials.
Because of poor communications, it was not possible to reach any of them.
"It looks like a landslide happened," said Nicole Organ, a 21-year-old veterinary student from Toronto at St. George's University, which overlooks the Grenadian capital. "There are all these colors coming down the mountainside -- sheets of metal, pieces of shacks, roofs came off in layers."
Looting
Students there, mostly Americans, were arming themselves with knives, sticks and pepper spray against looters, said Sonya Lazarevic, 36, from New York City. "We don't feel safe," she said by telephone.
When Organ wandered downtown after the hurricane passed, she said she saw bands of men carrying machetes looting a hardware store. She said she saw a bank with glass fa & ccedil;ade intact on her way down that was smashed when she returned.
While the storm passed, students hid under mattresses or in bathrooms. "The pipes were whistling, the doors were vibrating, gusts were coming underneath the window," Lazarevic said.
"It was absolutely terrifying."
The storm's howling winds and drenching rains flooded parts of Venezuela's north coast. Helicopter charter companies were busy Wednesday ferrying evacuated workers back to offshore oil drilling platforms there.
Projected path
Ivan is expected to reach Jamaica by Friday and Cuba by the weekend, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
It would follow close on the heels of Hurricane Charley, which killed 27 people in southwest Florida last month and caused an estimated $6.8 billion in insured damage.
"After Jamaica, it's probably going to hit somewhere in the U.S., unfortunately," meteorologist Jennifer Pralgo said. "We're hoping it's not Florida again, but it's taking a fairly similar track to Charley at the moment."
Another meteorologist at the Miami center, Hugh Cobb, added this grim warning: "Whoever gets this, it's going to be bad."
Cobb said that if Ivan hit Jamaica, it could be more destructive than Hurricane Gilbert, which was only Category 3 when it devastated the island in 1988.
Jamaica posted a hurricane watch Wednesday afternoon and ordered all schools closed and fishermen to pull their skiffs ashore and head for dry land. Haiti's southwest peninsula was on hurricane watch as well.
At 5 a.m. EDT, Ivan was centered about 535 miles east-southeast of Jamaica. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 60 miles and tropical storm-force winds an additional 160 miles. Ivan was moving west-northwest at 15 mph.
Ivan became the fourth major hurricane of a busy Atlantic season Sunday.