Fay batters Cuba coast, en route to Florida

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Fay raked Cuba's southern coast with gusty winds and heavy rains on Sunday and was expected to move ashore overnight before heading to Florida as a likely hurricane.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said maximum sustained winds were 50 mph (80 kph), but Cuban forecasters said gusts up to 66 miles per hour (110 kph) had been recorded at Cabo Cruz, which juts out into the Caribbean.

In its latest advisory, the hurricane center said Fay, the sixth storm of the Atlantic cyclone season, was cruising over warm Caribbean Sea waters at 15 miles per hour (24 kph) about 205 miles southeast of Havana and 270 miles south-southeast of Key West, Florida.

Fay, which killed at least five people when it struck Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Saturday, was expected to make landfall around midnight, cross the island and enter the Florida Straits by mid-morning on Monday.

Hurricane watches were posted along much of Cuba's central and western coast, including Havana, but Jorge Rubiera, chief of Cuba's weather center, said he did not expect Fay to become a hurricane, which has minimum winds of 74 miles per hour (118 km per hour).

But once back out over water, the U.S. hurricane center said Fay would pick up steam and possibly hit the Florida Keys on Monday night as a hurricane. Hurricane watches were posted in the Keys and along Florida's west coast.

Heavy rains were reported in some Cuban coastal provinces but so far only minor flooding and damage had occurred, officials said.

Rains up to 8 inches were possible, the Cuban Meteorological Institute said.

People in flood-prone areas had been evacuated, along with foreign tourists staying at coastal resorts in the storm's path, they said.

CARNIVAL GOES ON

In Guantanamo, the weather was not bad enough to stop the annual Carnival celebration, said Pedro Alvarez, 35, a resident of the coastal city that neighbors the controversial U.S. military detention center where the Bush administration holds more than 200 accused terrorists.

"Up to now there has been just a very light, off-and-on rainfall, so much so that last night the people continued celebrating Carnival," he told Reuters.

In the Florida Keys, 90 miles north of Cuba, officials on Sunday initiated a Keys-wide evacuation of visitors.

Recreational vehicles, trucks hauling boats and other vehicles heading north out of the islands at the state's tip caused bumper-to-bumper traffic, police said.

At a briefing at the state's emergency response center in Tallahassee, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, said, "Florida is prepared. We are ready. We are vigilant."