Ivan Builds After Smashing Grenada

Hurricane Ivan pummeled Grenada, Barbados and other islands with its devastating winds and rains, causing at least 15 deaths, before setting a direct course for Jamaica, Cuba and the hurricane-weary southern United States as it picked up muscle.

The most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean in 10 years damaged 90 percent of the homes in Grenada and destroyed a 17th century stone prison that left criminals on the loose as looting erupted, officials said Wednesday.

Ivan strengthened early Thursday, National Hurricane Center meteorologist Jennifer Pralgo told CBS Radio News.

"We have maximum sustained winds at 160 miles an hour which makes this storm a Category 5," she said. It will hit Jamaica late Friday night or early Saturday morning.

"It will pass someplace close to the Cayman Islands, and then over Cuba, and possibly impact the Florida coast, or the Bahamas, or into the Gulf of Mexico," Pralgo said.

Officials in the Florida Keys Thursday morning ordered the evacuation of tourists and mobile homes as they begin preparations for Hurricane Ivan.

The last Category 5 storm to hit the U.S. mainland was Andrew in 1992.

"A Category 5, or even a Category 4, storm is nothing to mess with," said Dave Bruns of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. "The best way to survive one of these storms is to be somewhere else when they come ashore."

But at Le Meridien Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, manager Earl Love told CBS Radio News the staff is ready, the guests have been warned, and "we have not seen any great exodus of people because of the impending hurricane."

"We are terribly devastated ... It's beyond imagination," Grenada's Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said from aboard a British Royal Navy vessel that rushed to the rescue.

Before it slammed into Grenada on Tuesday, Ivan gave Barbados and St. Vincent a pummeling, damaging hundreds of homes and cutting utilities. Thousands of people remained without electricity and water on Wednesday.

Britain's HMS Richmond was off the coast of Grenada to lend aid.

"The capital looks as if it has been completely devastated," said Cmdr. Mike McCarton. "They are going to need an awful lot of help over the next few weeks."

In Tobago, officials reported a 32-year-old pregnant woman died when a 40-foot palm tree fell into her home, pinning her to her bed.

In Venezuela, a 32-year-old man died after battering waves engulfed a kiosk on the northern coast.

A 75-year-old Canadian woman was found drowned in a canal swollen by flood waters in Barbados. Neighbors said the Toronto native, who had lived in Barbados for 30 years, braved the storm to search for her cat.

Details on the extent of the death and destruction in Grenada did not emerge until Wednesday because the storm cut all communications with the country of 100,000 people, and halted radio transmissions on the island.

Mitchell, whose own home was flattened, said 90 percent of houses on the island were damaged and he feared the death toll would rise. He said much of the country's agriculture had been destroyed, including the key nutmeg crop.

"If you see the country today, it would be a surprise to anyone that we did not have more deaths than it appears at the moment," Mitchell said.

Grenada is known as a major producer of nutmeg, and drew worldwide attention for the U.S. invasion that followed the coup, when American officials had determined Grenada's airport was going to become a joint Cuban-Soviet base. Cuba said it was helping build the airport for civilian use. Nineteen Americans died in the fighting and a disputed number of others that the United States put at 45 Grenadians and 24 Cubans.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said virtually every major building in St. George's has suffered structural damage. Grenada's once-quaint capital boasted English Georgian and French provincial buildings.

The United Nations is sending a disaster team, Eckhard said in New York City. The Caribbean disaster response agency, based in Barbados, said its team arrived Wednesday afternoon along with U.S. aid and Pan American Health Organization officials.

Because of poor communications, it was not possible to reach any of them.

"It looks like a landslide happened," said Nicole Organ, a 21-year-old veterinary student from Toronto at St. George's University, which overlooks the Grenadian capital. "There are all these colors coming down the mountainside — sheets of metal, pieces of shacks, roofs came off in layers."

Students there, mostly Americans, were arming themselves with knives, sticks and pepper spray against looters, said Sonya Lazarevic, 36, from New York City. "We don't feel safe," she said by telephone.

The school's Web site says all students are safe, have adequate supplies, and there are no reports of looting on campus.

When Organ wandered downtown after the hurricane passed, she said she saw bands of men carrying machetes looting a hardware store. She said she saw a bank with glass facade intact on her way down that was smashed when she returned.

While the storm passed, students hid under mattresses or in bathrooms. "The pipes were whistling, the doors were vibrating, gusts were coming underneath the window," Lazarevic said.

"It was absolutely terrifying."

The storm's howling winds and drenching rains flooded parts of Venezuela's north coast. Helicopter charter companies were busy Wednesday ferrying evacuated workers back to offshore oil drilling platforms there.