Hurricane Dennis leaves Cuba, 32 dead in Caribbean

Deadly Hurricane Dennis left behind a battered Cuba with shattered houses, shredded power lines and debris-littered streets yesterday and reintensified over the warm Gulf of Mexico after a Caribbean rampage that killed at least 32 people.

Dennis weakened as it crossed Cuba from a ferocious 240 km/h hurricane to a 144 km/h storm, but immediately regained some of its lost strength when it hit open water and skirted Key West, the popular tourist island at the end of the Florida Keys chain.

The storm headed on a northwest track that threatened key oil and natural gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, where a quarter of US production comes from, and was expected to hit the US mainland between the Florida panhandle and Mississippi yesterday.

Roaring winds with gusts of up to 160 km/h and driving rain pounded blacked-out Havana all night. Authorities cut off power to avoid accidents from fallen cables.

A weakened Dennis ploughed through the countryside just east of the capital city of two million, knocking down trees and power lines, but causing relatively minor damage.

"The wind was terrible and there was so much rain, but we are in one piece here," said the owner of a pizzeria in Guanabo, a beach town 23 km east of Havana.

Cuban authorities evacuated more than 600,000 people in different parts of the country as Dennis approached the southern city of Cienfuegos on Friday with 238 km/h gusts. But the measures, which usually allow the Communist island to escape hurricane strikes with minimal casualties, failed to prevent 10 deaths on Thursday night.

Cuban President Fidel Castro said most of the victims died in collapsed houses in two coastal towns in Granma province. An 18-day-old baby was among those who died, he said on state television, calling the hurricane a "diabolical force."

Officials said 15,400 of the adjacent towns' 20,000 houses were destroyed or damaged. Television images showed rows of clapboard houses flattened by the storm.

In southern Haiti, 15 people died when a swollen river tore away a bridge. The total number of deaths in Haiti reached 22, according to officials.

At 7 a.m. EDT, Dennis was located 152 km west-southwest of Key West, Florida, where gale-force winds could be felt. But the Florida Keys appeared to escape the full brunt of the storm as it moved northwestward at 23 km/h.

"We're very fortunate that we didn't get the bulk of the storm," Key West Mayor Jimmy Weekley told Miami's WFOR television as police cars rolled into the streets after the worst of the storm passed. "We haven't had a lot of damage."

Authorities had ordered people out of the lower half of the 60 km Florida Keys island chain as the powerful storm menaced Cuba.

Fueled by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it gained strength with 168 km/h winds and forecasters said it could strengthen further by the time it hits the US coast.

Alabama Governor Bob Riley ordered up to 500,000 people to flee coastal areas as the killer storm approached an area crushed by Hurricane Ivan in September during last year's season.

In the Gulf of Mexico, energy companies had pulled hundreds of workers off oil rigs and shut down some crude and natural gas production.

Dennis was on a similar trajectory as last September's Hurricane Ivan, which caused extensive damage to pipelines and rigs, and the approach of Dennis has helped keep US crude futures prices high.

Long lines of traffic formed along Alabama's Gulf coast as thousands of residents with fresh memories of Ivan fled low-lying coastal counties, heeding the governor's order.