Hurricane Dennis kills 10 in Cuba, 22 in Haiti

The shoreline of Playa Giron in Cuba, about 211 km southeast of Havana, as Hurricane Dennis approaches. Picture / Reuters

HAVANA - Hurricane Dennis roared through the Caribbean on Friday, leaving 10 dead in Cuba and 22 in Haiti before aiming for Havana on a course toward the United States Gulf of Mexico, where oil rigs and vulnerable coastal areas were evacuated.

The storm weakened slightly as it crossed Cuba but the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said Cuban meteorologists had reported a 240km/h gust that caused extensive damage in the city of Cienfuegos.

Cuban President Fidel Castro said Dennis had already killed 10 people as its outer bands brushed over Cuba's southeastern corner Thursday night. Storm fatalities are rare in Communist Cuba where the authorities can muster all state resources to evacuate hundreds of thousands from the path of hurricanes.

Most of the victims died in collapsed houses in Granma province, Castro said on state television. An 18-day-old baby was among those who died.

On Friday, the storm's sustained winds of 215km/h ripped up trees and downed electricity lines in Cienfuegos and US forecasters said Dennis was threatening the capital Havana, where many live in decrepit colonial buildings.

The US Hurricane Centre said the eye of Dennis would head into the eastern Gulf on Friday evening and skirt the Florida Keys on Saturday before taking aim at the US Gulf Coast.

It was the strongest Atlantic hurricane to form this early in the season since records began in 1851. Tourists and residents hurried to leave the fragile, low-lying Keys in long lines that became a familiar picture in 2004 when Florida was struck by four hurricanes in a row.

In southern Haiti, many people fled their flooded homes and the mayor of Grand-Goave, Marie Hingreed Nelchoix, said 17 people had died in and around her city, including 15 thrown into a swollen river when a bridge collapsed.

Four people died around the southeastern city of Jacmel, said a civil protection official. Earlier officials had reported that a young man was killed when a tree fell on a house near Les Cayes.

At 6pm EDT (10am NZT), Dennis was located about 120km east-southeast of Havana, and was moving northwestward at 28km/h.

In the US Gulf, a slew of energy companies said they were pulling workers off oil rigs and shutting 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. The US Gulf provides about a quarter of US oil and natural gas and the threat of Dennis has helped keep US crude futures prices near record highs above US$60 ($90) a barrel.

The storm was expected to regain some strength once it leaves the Cuban mainland and returns to open water, and US forecasters said they expected it to still be a major hurricane, capable of causing serious damage, by the time it reaches the US Gulf Coast on Sunday or early on Monday.

US authorities ordered residents to evacuate Key West and the lower part of the Florida Keys, which are connected to the southern tip of mainland Florida by a single highway.

Nasa decided on Friday to leave space shuttle Discovery on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, but continued to watch Dennis closely. A decision to roll Discovery back to its hangar would have delayed the scheduled Wednesday launch, the first shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster in 2003.

Dennis drenched Jamaica on Thursday, triggering mudslides that blocked roads as the core of the storm moved north of the mountainous Caribbean island of 2.6 million. About 3,000 people moved to storm shelters in south-central Jamaica.

It also soaked the Cayman Islands, a tiny British territory and banking centre with 43,000 residents. Hurricane Ivan damaged or destroyed 70 per cent of the buildings on Grand Cayman Island last year.

- REUTERS