By IANS
Miami : Hurricane Dean began dumping heavy rain on Jamaica as it approached the Caribbean island, after the government declared a weather emergency there, the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) has said in its storm advisory.
With sustained winds of 230 km per hour, and gusts of much greater strength, Dean was 80 km south of Kingston and moving at 32 km per hour to the west-northwest, the Spanish news agency EFE said.
After the storm jogged slightly to the south off its previous track, the government of Belize in Central America Sunday issued a tropical storm watch, and the hurricane warning was replaced with a tropical storm warning for the southern coast of Haiti, where at least three people lost their lives as Dean passed by.
So far, on its westerly track across the Caribbean, Dean has also killed one person in St. Lucia, two in Dominica, one in the Dominican Republic and another boy, 16, in Haiti.
However, the storm alert remained in effect for the Yucatan Peninsula from Chetumal to San Felipe.
The Jamaican government said that its storm preparations were complete, although up until Sunday Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller was urging the public to leave their homes and take refuge in specially outfitted shelters as the storm approached.
Of the approximately 1,000 shelters set up by the authorities, only 47 have filled up so far, since Jamaicans appear to have more fear that their houses will be broken into and robbed if they leave.
The powerful Category-4 storm continues to head west-northwest toward the Yucatan Peninsula, which it is expected to strike early Tuesday morning, but the state of Texas has received some relatively good news in that Dean’s westerly track has continued to drift slightly to the south, thus diminishing the risk that it will hit that state’s Gulf Coast, albeit increasing the threat to central Mexico.
A tropical storm watch remains in effect for some parts of Cuba, including the provinces of Pinar del Rio, La Habana, Ciego de Avila, Sancti Spiritus, Cienfuegos, Matanzas and Isla de la Juventud.
Dean is the first hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, and experts have said it could become a Category-5 phenomenon, the most powerful and destructive on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale, as it continues to move west over the warm waters of the Caribbean.
The most recent hurricane to traverse the Caribbean with such force was Wilma in 2005, when 28 named storms formed and 15 hurricanes moved through the Atlantic, including deadly Katrina, which virtually wiped out New Orleans and substantial portions of the US Gulf coastline.
Jamaica’s prime minister urged residents to not wait until the last minute to prepare for the storm in Jamaica, where the Aug 27 elections have been temporarily suspended.
Jamaican authorities declared a curfew Saturday night, and the island’s two international airports are closed. Residents are preparing to ride out the storm at home or in shelters, and hotels have been closed.
The Mexican weather service said Sunday that it expected Dean to make landfall early Tuesday on “the coast of (the Caribbean state of) Quintana Roo as a Category-5” hurricane.