swft
Needs a life
Full throttle!
Posts: One MEEEEEELLION
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posted September 11, 2004 03:33 PM
Here comes Ivan...
I don't think that he's gonna pay attention to the self imposed manufacturer's limit of 300 km/h...
Ivan becomes rare Category 5 storm, between Jamaica and Cayman Islands
Stevenson Jacobs
Canadian Press
September 11, 2004
Shirley Henry, 41, crouches under the raised concrete floor of a neighbor's house, seeking shelter from the rain in the Mounto neighborhood in Grand Anse, Grenada, Saturday, Sept. 11. (AP/Andres Leighton)
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KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - Hurricane Ivan strengthened to 265 kilometres per hour Friday afternoon, as it left Jamaica and aimed for the Cayman Islands, a rare Category 5 storm capable of catastrophic damage, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami reported.
Ivan has killed five people in Jamaica, 34 people in Grenada, five in Venezuela, one in Tobago, one in Barbados, and four youngsters in the Dominican Republic this week.
Millions more people are in its path, projected to go between the Cayman Islands, make a direct hit on Cuba and then move into the Gulf of Mexico, or hit southern Florida.
The Hurricane Center said it received the information from a U.S. air force reconnaissance plane.
If Ivan hits land in the Caribbean, it would be the first Category 5 storm to do so since hurricane David devastated the Dominican Republic in 1979, said Rafael Mojica, a meteorologist at the Miami centre. Hurricane Mitch was a Category 5 storm in the Caribbean Sea in 1998, but it hit Central America.
Howling winds and sheets of horizontal rain crashed around the Jamaican capital Kingston after Prime Minister P.J. Patterson declared a state of emergency and pleaded with the half million people considered in danger - about one in five islanders - to get to shelters. Most refused for fear abandoned homes would be robbed.
"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 the northwestern resort of Montego Bay.
In South Florida, long lines reappeared at gas stations and shoppers swarmed home building stores and supermarkets as residents braced for a third hurricane following Charley and Frances. Forecasters said Ivan could tear through the Keys as early as Monday.
  
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