Hurricane Dean gains power

Hurricane Dean went through the eastern Caribbean islands of St. Lucia and Martinique on Friday, ripping roofs, felling trees and flinging boulders and a boat onto roads.

Photo: Hurricane Dean gains power

Hurricane Dean gains power

The first hurricane of the Atlantic season, packing 100 mph (160 kph) winds, tore the roof off the children's ward at Victoria Hospital in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia, but patients already were evacuated and no injuries were reported.

Buildings across this eastern Caribbean island lost their roofs, often made of corrugated metal. With utility poles downed, the power company turned off electricity on the island to prevent anyone from being electrocuted.

St. Lucia state radio reported the capital was flooded and cluttered with wind-blown debris. Boulders from a sea wall were shoved onto roads by the force of storm surges. A boat also sat in the road, lifted from the sea by the storm.

The eye of Dean passed between St. Lucia and the French island of Martinique, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

"We don't have a roof...everything is exposed. We tried to save what we could," said Josephine Marcelus in Morne Rouge, a town in northern Martinique. "We sealed ourselves in one room, praying that the hurricane stops blowing over Martinique."

In Martinique's Epinay district, emergency officials cleared debris off roads to try to get to a family whose roof blew off. Some roads were impassable from blown-over billboards and other debris.

"I saw the roof of a municipal building fly off. This is a very hard thing to experience right now. The wind is something impressive," said Louis Joseph Manscour, deputy mayor of Trinite, Martinique.

Laurent Bigot, director of a Martinique crisis team, warned people to stay inside or "we could start grieving for victims."

On Dominica, just north of Martinique, winds damaged much of the banana crop, one of the island's main exports.

The Category 2 hurricane was expected to intensify as it enters the warm waters of the Caribbean - heading toward Jamaica.

It was too early to tell whether the storm would eventually strike the United States, but officials were gearing up for the possibility of the season's most severe storm yet.

"It's so far out, but it's not too early to start preparing," said Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Family members hired private planes to evacuate about 300 American medical students from Dominica's Ross University, said Dr. Mauricio Gomez, from the UCLA Medical Center in California, whose fiancee was among the students.

Most arrived in Puerto Rico to await flights on Friday bound for the United States, Gomez said.

The National Hurricane Center said Dean would likely be a dangerous Category 3 hurricane by the time it reaches the central Caribbean. Forecasters said it appeared Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands would be spared from the brunt of Dean's winds.

Dean could get closer to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola. As it approaches Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and Central America on Tuesday it could be an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, the hurricane center said. But forecasters always warn that their intensity predictions can be inaccurate that far in advance.

Forecasters predicted storm surge flooding at 2 feet to 4 feet (0.6 meters to 1.2 meters) above normal tide levels near the center of Dean as it passes over the Lesser Antilles and total possible rainfalls of 10 inches (25 centimeters) in mountainous areas.

Tropical storm warnings have been issued for the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla and St. Maarten and Grenada. The warnings were canceled for Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.