This is a bad one:
Powerful Hurricane Ivan charged west through the Caribbean on Wednesday after killing at least four people and smashing homes in a devastating punch to the tiny spice island of Grenada and glancing blows to nearby islands. Ivan's 140 mph (225 kph) winds prompted storm alerts for the Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonair and Curacao, the north coast of Venezuela and Colombia's Guajira peninsula and parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The latest storm in a very busy Atlantic hurricane season, Ivan roared into the southeast Caribbean on Tuesday, churning right over Grenada and delivering side swipes at Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Tobago.
Grenada, a volcanic island of 90,000 people that is a major producer of nutmeg, cloves and other spices, was worst hit. The storm killed at least three people and devastated the capital, St George's, destroying the island's emergency operations center and the home of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency said. A helicopter took off from a nearby British Navy ship and flew over the island on Wednesday to assess damage and to find out if the airport was usable, said Donovan Gentles, CDERA's Preparedness and Response manager. The island had suffered "total devastation," Gentles said. |