Menacing Hurricane Ike powers toward Cuba and Gulf

Oil companies had begun returning workers to the offshore platforms that were evacuated before Gustav hit Louisiana on Monday west of New Orleans. But one company, Shell Oil, said on Saturday it had stopped returning workers in case new evacuations were needed.

The deeper Ike goes into Cuba, the weaker it will be once it re-emerges over the Gulf of Mexico. But over water it was expected to rapidly regain its former intensity.

"In five days there will be a large hurricane in the central Gulf of Mexico," the hurricane centre said.

Alerts went up across eastern Cuba as residents shivered at the prospect of another major storm a week after Hurricane Gustav devastated parts of western Cuba. Tourists were evacuated from the Guardalavaca resort on Holguin province’s northern coast, as were thousands of students picking coffee in the mountains.

’THE DANGER ZONE’

In Havana, residents lined up at gas stations and searched stores for candles, crackers and canned goods after a forecaster warned on state television that "almost the entire country is in the danger zone."

"It looks like this year we will have no respite," Eduardo Gonzalez said from eastern Santiago de Cuba, "and if it continues like this we will have to live out the hurricane season in the shelters."

Ike pounded Britain’s Turks and Caicos islands on Saturday on a course that would take it through the southern Bahamas and then westward across the length of Cuba. By 5 a.m. (10 a.m. British time) the centre of the storm was east of Great Inagua Island.

Ike’s centre will swirl through the southeastern Bahamas Sunday morning and near or over eastern Cuba in the evening, the hurricane centre said.

Ike was forecast to batter the islands in its path with storm surge flooding up to 18 feet (5.5 metres) above normal tides. It was also expected to rain new misery on Haiti, where hundreds of people died in flooding and mudslides caused by three earlier storms in the last month.

In the low-lying Florida Keys, visitors were ordered out on Saturday and residents were told to evacuate on Sunday along the lone road linking the island chain to the mainland.

John Vagnoni, owner of the Green Parrot Bar in Key West, said there would be no hurricane party there.

"We don’t do a hurricane party, per se, at the Parrot," Vagnoni said. "Let’s take care of our own houses, be safe and then, afterward, there will be plenty of time to have a party. I’d much rather have a survivors’ party."

Ike set its sights on Cuba after Tropical Storm Hanna sloshed ashore over North and South Carolina early Saturday morning, felling trees and causing power outages and isolated flooding.

Hanna sped northeast along the U.S. East Coast, bringing heavy rains to the mid-Atlantic states and southern New England, spinning off a tornado that damaged about 100 homes in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

In the New York metropolitan area, gusts and downpours halted play at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, delaying the women’s finals and one men’s semifinal until Sunday. Airports stayed open but flights were delayed by up to three hours.

At 5 a.m. (10 a.m. British time), Hanna still had 50 mph (85 kph) winds but lost its tropical characteristics as it moved northeast through New England, with rain expected to end across Maine by sunrise.

(Additional reporting by Michael Haskins in Key West and Christopher Michaud in New York; Writing by Jane Sutton and Michael Christie, editing by Philip Barbara)