Dennis Batters Haiti, Jamaica

Category 3 Storm Could Strengthen As It Heads Toward Cuba

(CBS/AP) 
At the camp, about 150 yards from the ocean, troops put heavy steel shutters on sea-facing cell windows as heavy surf sent splashes of salt spray higher than the razor wire fence. Officials said Camp Delta was built to withstand winds up to 90 mph.

Dennis strengthened into a hurricane Wednesday and became a Category 3 storm Thursday afternoon — the third storm to threaten petroleum output in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Hurricane Center said the storm could strike the United States anywhere from Florida to Louisiana on Sunday or Monday. Private forecaster AccuWeather put the storm right into U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil and gas producing facilities.

Dennis came right behind Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall late Tuesday in Louisiana and hindered oil production and refining. On Thursday, remnants of Cindy dumped heavy rain in parts of the Carolinas, prompting flash flood and tornado watches.

Lead forecaster Martin Nelson said it was the first time the Atlantic season had four named storms this early since record-keeping began in 1851. The season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Packing sustained winds near 130 mph, Dennis could dump up to 15 inches of rain over the Sierra Maestra Mountains in southeastern Cuba and up to 10 inches over Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains, according to the Hurricane Center.

At 8 p.m. EDT, the storm was centered 50 miles southeast of Cabo Cruz in southeastern Cuba. It was moving toward the northwest 15 mph, the Hurricane Center said.

Hurricane force winds extended up to 45 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds another 140 miles.

In southern Haiti, wind gusts whipped sheets of rain that flooded roads and homes with up to three feet of debris-filled water. Tin roofs torn from homes and businesses tumbled in the wind.

Floodwaters rose to waist level in an abandoned church of Les Cayes and reached toward a table where 63-year-old Eloge Larame lay down, ill. His family of five stood on chairs, their feet still in water.

U.N. mission spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona said the biggest concern was that the rains would cause landslides on denuded mountains: "People build houses on the hills, without following any specifications, and then landslides occur, like last year in Gonaives."

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

Haiti, which began suffering from the storm early Thursday, 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. Torrential rains burst river banks and irrigation canals and unleashed mudslides that destroyed thousands of acres of fertile land in Haiti.

In Jamaica, where Hurricane Ivan destroyed 8,000 homes and killed 17 people when it brushed the coastline last year, a powerline was knocked down in eastern Morant Point and blocked the main coastal road.

"It's Dennis the menace," said 34-year-old shopkeeper Wayne Brown as he raced to box up sodas, canned food and bread from his small wooden store, which was badly damaged by Ivan last September.

"It's one storm after another, I've never seen anything like it in all my years," he said.

Jamaica's RJR radio reported one man narrowly escaped from a car swept away by fast-moving flood waters Wednesday evening in eastern St. Thomas parish, where hundreds of coastal farmers and fishermen were cut off by the storm.

Jamaica closed its airports and Air Jamaica canceled its flights.