HURRICANE Ivan hits Jamaica; Florida gets ready

High-pressure ridges and low-pressure troughs are funneling the storms to Florida.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
KINGSTON, Jamaica -- Waves two stories high crashed on Jamaica's eastern shore Friday, flooding homes and washing away roads as Hurricane Ivan's ferocious winds and pounding rains began to lash the island and threatened a direct hit on its densely populated capital. The death toll elsewhere in the Caribbean rose to 37.
Ivan's winds strengthened to near 155 mph -- the most powerful Category 5 ranking -- as the storm's center moved toward landfall at around 3 a.m. today, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson declared a public emergency and pleaded with the half million people considered in danger -- about one in five islanders -- to get to shelters. Many residents, however, refused to leave, fearing their homes would be robbed if abandoned.
"I'm not saying I'm not afraid for my life, but we've got to stay here and protect our things," said Lorna Brown, 49, pointing to a stove, television, cooking utensils and large bed crowded into a one-room concrete home on the beach at Montego Bay.
Cuba declared a hurricane watch across the entire island Friday after its leader, Fidel Castro, went on national television warning residents to brace themselves. "Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together" to rebuild, he said.
Preparations in Florida
In South Florida, long lines reappeared at gas stations and shoppers swarmed home-building stores and supermarkets. Forecasters said Ivan could tear through the Keys as early as Monday though there was still a chance the storm would instead move out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Farther south, in areas already struck by Ivan, authorities discovered more bodies along Venezuela's flooded coast and in devastated Grenada, where the U.S. State Department was arranging for the evacuations of all Americans who wish to leave the island.
"When dogs interfere with garbage bags and strew the contents all over the place -- that's what Grenada looks like," Trinidadian leader Patrick Manning said after visiting the island.
At 8 p.m., Ivan was centered about 45 miles south-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, moving west-northwest near 11 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended 60 miles from the center and tropical-force winds 175 miles more.
Evacuation from the Keys
In Florida, houses and stores in the Keys were boarded up as Monroe County officials urged the evacuation of the entire 100-mile chain of islands, which are highly vulnerable to storm surge because they barely rise out of the water. For the third time in a month, tourists were told to leave Thursday. The chain's 79,000 residents were told to leave by Friday, the first such evacuation in three years.
The evacuations promised to deprive businesses of the tourism dollars that are the area's lifeblood. Florida's $50 billion-a-year tourism industry is already struggling to recover from Charley and Frances, which shut down theme parks and kept visitors away from beaches.
The seemingly nonstop pummeling of Florida during the last month has been the result of a highly active hurricane season mixed with two unusually stubborn high-pressure ridges funneling the storms in a track directly over Florida.
It is also a taste of things to come.
"It's an overall increase in hurricane activity and bad luck for Florida," said Chris Landsea, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.