Hurricane Dean nears category 5 intensity

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Caribbean islands and resorts in the path of Hurricane Dean began to batten down yesterday as the massive storm plowed toward Haiti, Jamaica, the Caymans and the tourist-laden coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

Haiti froze air flights and coastal shipping through Sunday and prepared to evacuate seaside regions in Dean's path as the storm appeared poised to hit the island at midday Sunday.

"Arrangements have been made to evacuate people living in the zones at risk and shelter has been sought in other areas," a civil defense official said.

In Jamaica, dead at the center of the storm's expected track, the country went on full alert and hundreds of thousands flocked to markets and petrol stations to stock up on essentials.

And in the state of Quintana Roo on the eastern side of the Yucatan peninsula, home to the famed Cozumel and Cancun resorts, Mexican officials began evacuating some 80,000 tourists -- just two years after a series of massive storms devastated the region.
 
With sustained winds hitting 240 kilometers (150 miles) per hour, Dean was characterized Saturday by the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center as an "extremely dangerous hurricane."

It hovered just under the threshold of a monster category five storm as it moved toward southern Haiti, which ordered a red alert fearing a direct hit.

Category five hurricanes can bring huge storm surges of 5.5 meters (18 feet) or more and can require the massive evacuation of areas as far inland as 10 kilometers (six miles).

At 1800 GMT, the center of the storm was 815 kilometers (505 miles) east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, and 285 kilometers (175 miles) south of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the center said.

Dean was moving west-northwest at 28 kilometers (17 miles) per hour and was forecast to keep on that track for the next 24 hours, passing close to Haiti's southwest tip mid-morning Sunday before moving directly toward Jamaica.

It was also on direct course for the Cayman Islands and then forecast to move to the resort region of northern Yucatan.

In Jamaica, following a three-hour meeting with the National Disaster Committee on Friday morning, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called on any off-duty police officers, firefighters and prison warders to report for duty, in an effort to reinforce the island's security and rescue operations in preparation for the impending natural disaster.

"I call on everyone to begin to put in place the necessary safety precautions as we prepare for Hurricane Dean," she said at a press briefing at Jamaica House after meeting with the committee.

While the Miami Hurricane Center's forecast shows the storm now not expected to strike the United States, the Houston, Texas-based mission control of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration moved to speed up the current space mission to bring the Endeavour shuttle back to Earth on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, in hopes of avoiding a possible forced shutdown of the crucial operations centers.

Earlier, Dean left flooding and devastation in the eastern Caribbean.
In Martinique, it caused widespread flooding early Friday in the southern part of the island, leaving the town of Riviere-Pilote completely under water.

"This is real devastation," a local official said by telephone. Violent winds tore the roofs off the local fire and police stations and numerous other buildings, the official said.

One third of Martinique's population of some 115,000 people have been left without electricity by the storm, and nearly 100 percent of the island's banana crop and 70 percent of its sugarcane crop had been lost, according to Paris officials.