Dennis Now A 'Dangerous Hurricane'

Forecasters Say Storm Could Become Category 3 Hurricane

(CBS/AP)  Residents of many Caribbean nations faced more imminent danger.

Some rural Jamaicans were cut off by floodwaters hours before the storm was to pass, and authorities planned to fly over the affected southeast area in a helicopter to search for stranded islanders.

Packing sustained winds near 80 mph, the fourth storm of the Atlantic season could dump up to 12 inches of rain over mountains in its path, including Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Last year three hurricanes — Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — tore through the Caribbean with a collective ferocity not seen in many years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damages.

Inside the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the military prepared audio tapes in at least eight languages warning that a storm was coming and heavy steel shutters would be closed on some cell windows, said Col. Mike Bumgarner.

Military officials had no immediate plans to evacuate troops or detainees at Camp Delta, which is about 150 yards from the ocean but was built to withstand winds up to 90 mph, according to Navy Cmdr. Anne Reese, supervisor of camp maintenance and construction.

Power lines could be knocked down and roofs could be damaged on some older, wooden buildings, Reese said.

"It will be bad, but it's not going to be very destructive," she said.

Dennis grew into a Category 1 hurricane Wednesday afternoon and threatened to hit Jamaica as a Category 2, the Hurricane Center said.

Meteorologist Chris Hennon said the quadrant threatening Haiti "is typically the worst part of the storm" in terms of wind strength and rains.

Haiti took the deadliest hit of last year's hurricane season when Jeanne, at the time a tropical storm, triggered flooding and mudslides: 1,500 people were killed, 900 missing and presumed dead and 200,000 left homeless.

Jeanne's torrential rains burst river banks and irrigation canals and unleashed mudslides that destroyed an estimated 24,700 acres of fertile land in Haiti. Looting and gang attacks on relief vehicles stretched U.N. peacekeepers trying to stabilize Haiti after the February 2004 rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Poverty-stricken Haitians said there was little they could do about the warnings this time.

"It's not only that we don't have money to prepare, we don't have money either to eat. We are willing to stay here and let whatever happens happen," said Martine Louis-Pierre, a 43-year-old mother of three selling fried food on a street of Port-au-Prince.

At 8 p.m. EDT, the storm was centered about 280 miles south of the Kingston Jamaica, moving west-northwest near 13 mph, the Hurricane Center said. Hurricane-force winds stretched 25 miles.

Private forecaster AccuWeather has the storm tracking into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, with landfall Friday or Saturday on the Florida-Alabama border as a strong Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane, with winds from 96 mph to 130 mph.

Radio stations in Haiti and Jamaica warned people to stay away from rivers that could overflow their banks. Some southern roads in Haiti, which is dangerously deforested, already were blocked by flooding Wednesday.

Six small communities in the eastern Jamaica parish of St. Thomas were also cut off by flood waters, emergency management spokeswoman Nadene Newsome said.

Jamaica's Prime Minister P.J. Patterson abandoned the final day of the annual Caribbean summit in St. Lucia, to rush home. Before leaving, he went on Jamaican national radio to say "I call upon every Jamaican and every community to be prepared ... to protect those who are infirm, the elderly and the young."