Tourists trying to escape Dean

People in Jamaica hit the stores to stock up on supplies.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Alarmed tourists jammed Caribbean airports for flights out of Hurricane Dean’s path Saturday as the monster storm began sweeping past the Dominican Republic and Haiti and threatened to engulf Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

In Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, a boy was pulled into the ocean and drowned while watching waves kicked up by the Category 4 storm strike an oceanfront boulevard, the emergency operations center reported. The rough waves also destroyed five houses and damaged 15 others along the Dominican coast, emergency officials said.

In Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which stand directly in Dean’s path, fear gripped many islanders and tourists alike.

Evacuations

Bracing for the storm to hit today, Jamaica began evacuating people to more than 1,000 shelters nationwide. People jammed supermarkets and hardware stores in the capital of Kingston to stock up on canned food, bottled water, flashlights, batteries, lamps and plywood, while shop owners hammered wood over windows at malls in the city.

Resident Elaine Russell said she was getting ready for the storm remembering Hurricane Ivan’s destruction in 2004. “I can’t take it,” she said. “The storm is bad enough but it’s what happens afterward — there’s no light, no water.”

Before dawn, tourists began lining up outside the Montego Bay airport in western Jamaica to book flights out. The storm was expected to bring 155 mph winds and as much as 20 inches of rain.

Shante Morgan of Moorpark, Calif., said a lack of information about the severity of the storm was fueling the fear.

“People are freaking out because they’re not getting answers at their hotel,” said Morgan, 38, who got a Saturday flight after waiting several hours. “They’re really playing down the potential influence of the hurricane.”

Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called for a halt to campaigning for the Aug. 27 general elections, saying: “Let us band together and unite in the threat of this hurricane.”

Lines of tourists

Further west in the low-lying Cayman Islands, lines of tourists snaked out of the international airport terminal and onto the lawn outside. Many tourists flopped under a tree to get out of the sun, surrounded by their luggage.

Cayman Airways added 15 flights to Florida from the wealthy British territory, and they were quickly sold out. The islands were expected to take a direct hit Monday.

The scene was much calmer in the Dominican Republic. Residents ran errands at stores with fully stocked shelves, despite government advisories about heavy rains and possible flooding.

The outer bands of the storm were expected to bring as much as 6 inches of rain to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola.

Dean, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, gained strength over warm Caribbean waters after claiming six lives and devastating banana and sugar crops when it hit tiny islands in the eastern Caribbean on Friday as a Category 2 storm.