A street covered by electrical posts and cables after Hurricane Gustav. (Photo: AP)
Via AP:
Gustav howled into Cuba’s tobacco-growing western tip as a catastrophic Category 4 hurricane on Saturday while both Cubans and Americans on the Gulf Coast scrambled to flee the path of the fast-growing storm.
Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it hit Cuba’s mainland after passing over its Isla de la Juventud province, where screaming 150 mph winds toppled telephone poles, mango and almond trees and peeled back the tin roofs of homes.
Isla de la Juventud civil defense chief Ana Isla said there were “many people injured,” but no reports of deaths. She said nearly all its roads were washed out and that some regions were heavily flooded.
“It’s been very difficult here,” she said on state television.
Authorities evacuated at least 300,000 people across Cuba, including western communities, cities near Havana and on the Isla de la Juventud, or Isle of Youth, an island of 87,000 people south of mainland Cuba.
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Cuba’s top meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, said the hurricane’s massive center made landfall in mainland Cuba near the community of Los Palacios in Pinar del Rio – a region that produces much of the tobacco used to make Cuba’s famed cigars.
There, the storm knocked down power lines, shattered windows and blew the roofs off some small homes.
Rubiera said the storm brought hurricane-force winds to much of the western part of Havana, where power was knocked out as winds blasted sheets of rain sideways though the streets and whipped angry waves against the famed seaside Malec
