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Sandy now a category 1 hurricane as it hits Jamaica
“We don’t have much time. We heard on the radio that the hurricane was coming this way,” he said in the poor Kingston community of Standpipe, situated next to one of the debris-clogged gullies that crisscross the capital. “We’ll be getting wet.”
Dangerous flash floods and mudslides were a threat for the tropical island of roughly 2.7 million inhabitants, especially in mountainous areas, Jamaica’s meteorological service said.
The island’s bus service said it was on standby to evacuate residents of Kintyre, which is typically pummeled even by relatively minor storms. Emergency officials ordered mandatory evacuations for people living in historically hard-hit low-lying and coastal towns.
The storm was predicted to drop as much as 25 centimetres (12 inches) of rain, especially over central and eastern parts of Jamaica, the country’s meteorological service said. Some isolated spots could see as much as 50 centimetres (20 inches), according to U.S. forecasters. Battering waves and a strong storm surge were also forecast. By Wednesday morning, sea water was already washing over the streets of Port Royal, a depressed fishing village at the tip of a spit of land near Kingston’s airport.
More than 100 fishermen were stranded in outlying Pedro Cays, a lobster- and conch-rich area about 66 kilometres (40 miles) off Jamaica’s southern coast. Some of them told local media they lacked fuel to get back to the mainland, but authorities said they wilfully disobeyed an evacuation order.
Airports in Kingston and Montego Bay shut down for the day and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. announced that its Allure of the Seas megaship would not stop at Jamaica’s northern Falmouth terminal on Wednesday, remaining at sea instead.
To deter looters and other criminals, Deputy Police Commissioner Glenmore Hinds warned that police “will react swiftly to protect life and property.”
