By Jeff Franks
HAVANA (Reuters) - A weakened Hurricane Ike swept towardwestern Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico oil fields on Monday afterits high winds and heavy rains ripped a wide swath ofdestruction through the eastern side of the island, killing atleast four people.
With top sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (130 km perhour), Ike had fallen to a Category 1 storm after it blew intothe Caribbean Sea and hugged the Cuban coast, moving northwestat 12 mph (19 kph) about 165 miles (265 km) east-southeast ofHavana.
State-run Cuban media reported widespread damage throughoutthe eastern provinces and showed videos of toppled trees,destroyed homes, downed power lines and flooded towns,inundated by up to 10 inches (25 cm) of rain, swollen riversand, along the coast, a surging sea.
Cuban television said four people died in the storm,including two men who were electrocuted when they tried to takedown an antenna that fell into an electric line, a woman killedwhen her house collapsed and a man crushed when a tree blewover onto his home. Hurricane deaths are rare in Cuba where thegovernment conducts mass evacuations.
The Cuban weather service said Ike was unlikely to regainstrength before coming ashore unless it moved away from land,where the 89-degree Fahrenheit (32-Celsius) waters of theCaribbean could fire it up.
Forecasts called for Ike to take a path similar to that ofHurricane Gustav, which devastated the Isle of Youth and thewestern province of Pinar del Rio with 150 mph (240 kph) windsand two days later hit Louisiana on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
It was expected to emerge into the Gulf on Tuesday andregain strength on a path through the heart of the offshore oilfields that produce a quarter of U.S. oil and 15 percent of itsnatural gas.
Energy companies, which shut down most Gulf oil and gasproduction during Gustav, delayed restarting the flow becauseof Ike, which was likely to pare inventories in coming weeks.Shell Oil and other energy companies said they were evacuatingworkers from offshore rigs.
ECONOMIC TOLL
The U.S. National Hurricane Centre said the storm waspointed toward Texas, but New Orleans, the city swamped in 2005when Hurricane Katrina killed 1,500 people and caused $80billion in damage along the U.S. Gulf Coast, remained apossible target.
Gustav just missed the low-lying city protected byfloodwalls and levees.
Ike tore roofs off houses when it hit Britain's Turks andCaicos Islands as a ferocious Category 4 hurricane on thefive-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, and floods triggeredby its torrential rains were blamed for at least 66 deaths inHaiti, where Tropical Storm Hanna killed 500 last week.
The U.S. Navy ship Kearsarge arrived near Haiti on Mondaywith eight helicopters and three landing craft to help deliverrelief supplies, the U.S. military said.
Cuba evacuated 1.8 million people ahead of Ike.
The storm was expected to take a toll on the economy ofCuba, still reeling from the destruction of more than 100,000homes by Gustav.
As it passed over the eastern provinces, it swept throughthe main growing regions for sugar and coffee and shut downCuba's nickel mines and processing plants.
People in the stricken area reported that Ike strippedripening beans from coffee bushes and levelled fields of sugarcane as it pounded the area for hours.
Sugar prices rose as Ike moved across the key Caribbeangrowing region.
Production of nickel, the island's top export, was stoppedas the storm approached on Sunday and remained closed Monday.Nickel production is located in the state of Holguin, where Ikemade landfall on Sunday with 120 mph (195 kph) winds and whichbore the full brunt of the storm.
"There is a lot of wind and rain. We're worried," saidCarmen, a housewife in the city of Trinidad on Cuba's southerncoast. "We don't have electricity, we're waiting to see whathappens."
"It doesn't seem like Ike wants to leave, and now the riveris overflowing," said Evelio Hernandez, a farmer in Camaguey,330 miles (534 km) southeast of Havana. "In the end, it's allbad news."
The Cuban government promised to provide aid quickly tostorm victims, but Eduardo Hernandez, in Holguin 460 miles (743km) from the Cuban capital, said something more may be needed.
"We are going to have to call on our African gods torecover from this," he said.
Ahead of Ike's second landfall on Cuba, Pinar del Riobraced for its second storm in 10 days and officials orderedevacuations from low-lying areas.
In Havana, which was near the expected path for Ike, 49,000people had been moved from vulnerable areas and out ofcrumbling buildings prone to collapse in heavy rains and highwinds.
Across the Florida Straits, 90 miles (144 km) to the north,schools, hospitals and government offices were closed in theFlorida Keys, a 110-mile (177-km) island chain connected by asingle road.
The islands were not expected to take a direct hit, buttourists were evacuated. Residents had also been ordered outbut that measure was allowed to expire as Ike took a moresoutherly route.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva inPort-au-Prince, Rosa Tania Valdes, Marc Frank and EstebanIsrael in Havana, Erwin Seba in Houston, Richard Valdmanis inNew York; Editing by Tom Brown and Eric Beech)
