Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic — Alarmed tourists jammed Caribbean airports to escape Hurricane Dean’s path Saturday as the monster storm began sweeping past the Dominican Republic and Haiti and threatened to engulf Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. NASA decided to bring the space shuttle home a day early.
The Category 4 storm’s effects could be felt in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, where an 11-year-old boy was killed by flying debris while watching the waves strike an oceanfront boulevard, the Dominican emergency operations center reported.
But as dark clouds rolled in from the southeast, residents calmly ran errands at stores with fully stocked shelves, despite government advisories about heavy rains and possible flooding.
“Nothing’s going to happen here — a lot of water but nothing else,” said Pedro Alvajar, 61, as he sat in a doorway selling lottery tickets.
The outer bands of the storm were expected to bring as much as 6 inches of rain to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola.
In Haiti, the government issued radio alerts for people in the mountains and coastal areas. In 2004, Tropical Storm Jeanne brushed the impoverished and heavily deforested country, triggering massive floods that killed 1,900 people and left 900 others missing.
As of 2 p.m. EDT Saturday, Dean was centered about 175 miles south of Santo Domingo and 500 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica.
It was moving west at 17 mph and had maximum sustained winds near 150 mph.
In Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which stand directly in Dean’s path, fear gripped many islanders and tourists alike.
Bracing for a direct hit on Sunday, Jamaica began evacuating people to more than 1,000 shelters nationwide.
Before dawn, tourists began lining up outside the Montego Bay airport in western Jamaica to book flights out. The storm was expected to bring 155 mph winds and as much as 20 inches of rain.
Shante Morgan of Moorpark, Calif., said a lack of information about the severity of the storm was fueling the fear.
“People are freaking out because they’re not getting answers at their hotel,” said Morgan, 38, who got a Saturday flight after waiting several hours. “They’re really playing down the potential influence of the hurricane.”
Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called for a halt to campaigning for the Aug. 27 general elections, saying, “Let us band together and unite in the threat of this hurricane.” Michelle Edwards of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management said people in vulnerable communities across the island will be moved to schools and other shelters.
Further west in the low-lying Cayman Islands, lines of tourists waiting for flights snaked out of the international airport terminal and onto the lawn outside. Many tourists flopped under a tree to get out of the sun, surrounded by their luggage.
Cayman Airways added 15 flights to Florida from the wealthy British territory, and they were quickly sold out. The islands were expected to take a direct hit on Monday.
Dean, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, gained strength over warm Caribbean waters after claiming six lives and devastating banana and sugar crops when it hit tiny islands in the eastern Caribbean on Friday as a Category 2 storm.
It was expected to clip Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and enter the Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Authorities on Mexico’s Caribbean coast began evacuating tourists and residents from low-lying Holbox island north of Cancun on Saturday. A total of 2,200 people, including some 250 Mexican and foreign tourists, were ordered to leave, state officials said.
Forecasters said it was too soon to say whether the hurricane would strike the United States.
Playing it safe, NASA moved up Endeavour’s departure from the international space station to Sunday and ordered the shuttle to land Tuesday, a day early, out of fear that Hurricane Dean might disrupt flight operations.
The astronauts had hurriedly completed a shortened spacewalk Saturday and were still cleaning up from it when the decision came down from mission managers. The two crews shook hands and said goodbye, then closed the hatches between their docked spacecraft.
NASA worried the hurricane might veer toward Houston, the home of Mission Control, forcing an emergency relocation of flight controllers to Cape Canaveral. The makeshift control center there would not be nearly as good or big as the Houston operation, which is why managers wanted to bring Endeavour back to Earth early.
In Cuba, which could get rain from the outer bands of the storm, the government issued a tropical storm warning and said it was evacuating 50,000 people from three provinces.
Dean passed near the islands of St. Lucia and Martinique early Friday as a Category 2 storm with winds near 100 mph.
In St. Lucia, fierce winds tore corrugated metal roofs from dozens of homes and the pediatric ward of a hospital, whose patients had been evacuated hours earlier. Police spokeswoman Tamara Charles said a 62-year-old man drowned when he tried to retrieve a cow from a rain-swollen river.
In Dominica, a woman and her 7-year-old son were killed when a rain-soaked hillside gave way and crushed the home where they were sleeping, said Cecil Shillingford, the national disaster response coordinator. Dominica’s government reported at least 150 homes were damaged.
Authorities said two people died on the French island of Martinique, including a woman who apparently fell and drowned.
——— Associated Press writers Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Tammie Chisholm in George Town, Cayman Islands; Guy Ellis in Castries, St. Lucia; Ellsworth Carter in Roseau, Dominica; and Herve Preval in Fort-de-France, Martinique, contributed to this report.
