MIAMI — An extremely dangerous Hurricane Ike churned through the Caribbean on Sunday with 135-mph winds that ripped apart the quaint clapboard houses of Grand Turk Island, shredded mangroves in the Bahamas and destroyed already rain-soaked crops in Haiti and Cuba.
The fourth powerful storm to ravage the islands in less than a month, Ike eased from a Category 4 hurricane to a Category 3 one, with winds of 120 mph, late in the day. It also tacked slightly northward to threaten the Florida Keys and jump-start what had been a lackadaisical evacuation.
Heavy rains from Ike's outer bands brushed the north coast of Haiti, including the flooded city of Gonaives, where hundreds were killed last week when Tropical Storm Hanna inundated rivers and washed out bridges and levees. Haitian officials reported recovering about 50 more bodies Sunday, and a Turks and Caicos Islands official said deaths had been reported there but not confirmed.
Gonaives, an impoverished port city at the foot of denuded mountains, was the scene of utter destruction four years ago, when Tropical Storm Jeanne triggered mudslides that killed at least 2,000. The toll from this season's storms grew to at least 300, with some unconfirmed estimates higher than 500.
United Nations peacekeepers deployed aid and engineering convoys toward Gonaives, but the sole bridge carrying traffic into the north from Port-au-Prince had been washed out last week, the mission reported. Airlifts were underway, but what quantities could be ferried north would be insufficient for the estimated 350,000 people without food or water.
Rice crops on the fertile plains south of Gonaives were ravaged by Hanna, and Ike's outer bands dumped more water on the inundated fields.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center forecast that Ike would move northwestward over Cuba, weakening to a Category 1 storm, with winds at 74 to 95 mph, late today.
Ike's eye hit the northern coast of Cuba in Camaguey province Sunday night, dumping as much as a foot of rain on the rural region and prompting the U.S. National Weather Service -- which collaborates with Cuban colleagues in one of the few U.S.-Cuba contacts -- to warn of flash floods and severe hazards.
Cuban authorities evacuated 250,000 people from low-lying areas and were preparing more sweeping relocations from Havana if the storm stayed on its direct course for the capital. Hurricane Gustav damaged or destroyed nearly 150,000 homes a week ago, and Ike was expected to traverse the length of the island, which has a population of 11.2 million, the head of the government meteorological institute, Jose Rubiera, told state television.
