Hurricane Ernesto targets Haiti, Cuba, Florida

Hurricane Ernesto threatened Haiti with deadly floods and prompted evacuations in Florida and Cuba yesterday as it headed for the Gulf of Mexico a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Residents of the battered US Gulf coast jazz city were breathing more easily as the Atlantic season's first hurricane took a path that left Louisiana outside the danger zone but raised alarms in Florida, weary from eight hurricanes in the last two years.

Cuba, facing its first hurricane in decades without President Fidel Castro at the helm, began evacuating 200,000 people from its eastern provinces and called its fishing fleet to harbour as Ernesto, with 120 km per hour winds, swept through the Caribbean Sea just south of Haiti.

Forecasters said Ernesto could become a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of nearly 160 kph in the Gulf, home to a quarter of US oil and gas production. Its most likely path would take it ashore on Florida's west coast near Tampa on Thursday.

Ernesto's centre was about 170 km west-southwest of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) yesterday, the US National Hurricane Centre said. It was moving northwest at 15 kph and was expected to be near the southeastern coast of Cuba this morning.

Forecasters said Ernesto appeared to have weakened as it pounded the Haitian coast, and it could be downgraded to a tropical storm later in the day.

Heavy rain fell in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and triggered some flooding in the port city of Gonaives, the nation's civil protection department said.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has been virtually stripped of trees, leaving it vulnerable to deadly floods. Tropical Storm Jeanne killed about 3,000 people two years ago when its rains triggered mudslides in and around Gonaives.

Forecasters said up to 30 cm of rain - and 50 cm in isolated areas - could fall on Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Ernesto was likely to weaken over Cuba and regroup after it emerges off the north coast of the island, forecasters said. The official intensity forecast had Ernesto as a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds near 160 kph in the Gulf.

"However, Ernesto could approach Category 3 status prior to the projected landfall in western Florida," the hurricane centre said.

Ernesto's most likely track took it to Tampa on Thursday morning and across Florida to the Atlantic Ocean early on Friday. But virtually all areas of the state from the Panhandle to the Florida Keys and populous Miami-Fort Lauderdale were in its possible path.

Emergency managers ordered visitors to leave the Keys, the first step of a staged evacuation of the low-lying, 177-km island chain off Florida's southern tip. The hurricane centre said a tropical storm watch might be required for parts of the Keys later yesterday.

As the storm's track shifted east, New Orleans, still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina's blow last August 29, was farther from the danger zone. But the uncertainty of long-range forecasts had much of Gulf coast, and the US energy industry, on alert.