By Marc Frank
HAVANA (Reuters) - Strong wind gusts howled throughblacked-out Havana and thousands huddled in shelters on Tuesdayas Hurricane Ike churned toward western Cuba on a path thatbegan to look less threatening for the heart of U.S. oilproduction in the Gulf of Mexico.
Foliage and debris covered the streets of the Cuban capitalas the weakened hurricane hugged Cuba's southern coast after arampage through eastern provinces that toppled trees, destroyedhomes and downed power lines. Town were flooded by up to 10inches (25 cm) of rain, swollen rivers and a surging sea.
"It sounds like Havana has been invaded by an army ofghosts," Havana resident Maria Valdez said as tropical stormforce winds whipped through the capital.
Cuban media said four people had died in the storm. Two menwere electrocuted when they tried to take down an antenna thatfell into a power line, a woman died when her house collapsedand a man was crushed when a tree toppled onto his home.
Hurricane deaths are rare in Cuba, where the governmentconducts mass evacuations.
Ike's most likely track would take it over western Cuba andto the U.S. coast near the Texas-Mexico border by earlySaturday -- a path that posed a diminished risk to the bulk ofthe 4,000 Gulf platforms that produce 25 percent of U.S. oiland 15 percent of its natural gas.
BLACKED OUT
Power was out east of Havana due to widespread storm damageand areas to the west were deliberately blacked out as aprecaution as Ike moved toward the Gulf after spending morethan 36 hours ripping up the island from one end to the other.
Forecasters said winds in Havana would strengthen duringthe morning and be followed by hours of torrential rain. Thatwas bad news for the Cuban capital, where more than half thebuildings and homes are rated in poor to bad condition.
Thousands of residents waited it out in shelters and at thehomes of friends and family.
"The winds picked up at around eight last night and itstill feels like 100,000 devils are blowing at the same time,"university professor Victor Hernandez said from the city ofCienfuegos on the south-central coast.
With top sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (130 km perhour), Ike was a Category 1 storm on the five-stepSaffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale as it approachedwestern Cuba.
Its centre was about 40 miles (65 km) south of Havana at 8a.m. EDT (1 p.m. British time) and moving west-northwest at 13mph (20 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said.
Ike's effects were being felt in the Isle of Youth andwesternmost Pinar del Rio, where Hurricane Gustav levellednearly everything in its path with 150 mph (240 kph) winds 10days ago before moving on to Louisiana, on the U.S. Gulf coast,two days later. Gustav came ashore near New Orleans, the cityswamped by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.
For days, Ike appeared to be aimed at the heart of U.S.energy production near the coast of Louisiana and east Texas.As a result, energy companies, which had shut down most oil andgas output during Gustav, delayed restarting their production.
But Ike's latest most likely track shifted to the south andwest, toward the Mexican border. It was expected to regainCategory 3 strength before hitting the coast.
The shift eased fears that Ike would threaten New Orleans,still scarred by Katrina in 2003, which killed 1,500 people andcaused $80 billion (45 billion pounds) in damage on the U.S.Gulf Coast.
CUBA ECONOMIC TOLL
Ike caused serious damage when it hit Britain's Turks andCaicos Islands and the southern Bahamas as a ferocious Category4 hurricane. Floods triggered by its torrential rains wereblamed for at least 66 deaths in Haiti, where Tropical StormHanna killed 500 last week.
Ike was expected to take a toll on the economy of Cuba,still reeling from Gustav's destruction of more than 100,000homes.
The storm swept through the main growing regions for sugarand coffee and shut down Cuba's nickel mines and processingplants. People in the stricken eastern provinces reported thatthe storm stripped ripening beans from coffee bushes andlevelled fields of sugar cane.
Production of nickel, the island's top export, was stoppedas the storm approached on Sunday. Nickel production is locatedin the state of Holguin, where Ike made landfall on Sunday with120 mph (195 kph) winds and which bore the full brunt of thestorm.
(Additional reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes, Jeff Franks andEsteban Israel in Havana; writing by Jim Loney, editing byMichael Christie and Jackie Frank)
