Caribbean islands get ready for Hurricane Dean
Pastor Dale Morgan
Caribbean islands get ready for Hurricane Dean*
* Story Highlights
* Forecasters: It's too early to say which Caribbean island will get
brunt of Dean
* Dean expected to gain strength once it's over the warm waters of
the Caribbean
* Islands of Dominica and St. Lucia issue hurricane warnings
* Storm could become Category 4 hurricane as it approaches Mexico
next week
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Islands in the eastern Caribbean braced
for Hurricane Dean, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, as it
approached on Thursday with 90 mph winds.
Hotels in Dominica and Martinique prepared to evacuate tourists from
seaside rooms, and in St. Lucia, volunteers went door to door to advise
islanders who may have missed radio and television advisories about the
hurricane, expected to hit overnight Thursday.
"At some point we'll have just have to hunker down to let the storm pass
and then pop up to see what remains," said Dawn French, director of St.
Lucia's National Emergency Management Organization.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said it
was too early to say which island would catch the brunt of the storm as
it passes from the Atlantic over the Lesser Antilles and into the Caribbean.
Once over the warm waters of the Caribbean, it is expected to gain
strength and take a bead on Jamaica and the southern coasts of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola.
The hurricane center said Dean likely would be a dangerous Category 3
hurricane by the time it reaches the central Caribbean early Sunday and
could become an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane as it
approaches the Mexican resort town of Cancun, on the Yucatan Peninsula,
on Tuesday.
About 18 guests at the Jungle Bay Resort & Spa, on Dominica's Atlantic
coast, will be evacuated from their cottages to spend Thursday night in
a reinforced steel-and-concrete shelter, hotel spokeswoman Laura Ell said.
"Everyone's very calm but taking it seriously," she said. "Many of our
guests are from Florida and used to these kinds of things."
The islands of Dominica and St. Lucia issued hurricane warnings.
"We should prepare for a worst-case scenario," Cecil Shillingford,
Dominica's disaster preparedness coordinator, said on state-owned DBS radio.
Yves Noel, working the front desk at the Sofitel Bakoua in Martinique,
said the hotel was keeping some garden rooms available in case seafront
rooms are threatened by high surf.
The hotel had about 160 guests -- mostly from Europe, the United States
and the Caribbean -- and had seen only one or two cancellations of
reservations, despite the approach of the Category 1 hurricane.
"We have to wait and see what happens," Noel said. "It's not sure if the
hurricane will pass over Martinique or maybe go to the north."
A U.S. Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft will investigate Dean
on Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said. It predicted
storm surge flooding at 2 to 4 feet above normal tide levels near the
center of Dean and total possible rainfalls of 7 inches in mountainous
areas.
At 11 a.m. ET, Dean was centered about 350 miles east of Barbados and
about 455 miles east of Martinique, according to the hurricane center.
It was moving west near 23 mph, and was expected to continue the same path.
Hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph extended up to 30 miles from
the center of the storm, and tropical-storm-force winds of at least 39
mph extended up to 105 miles.
Islands near the hurricane's path could suffer wind damage and flooding
from the storm, which could drop 2 to 5 inches of rain, forecasters said.
Hurricane watches were in effect for the islands of Martinique and
Guadeloupe. Tropical storm warnings have been issued for Antigua and
Barbuda, Barbados, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Maarten.