Monster Hurricane Dennis heads for US Gulf coast

Cubans play soccer under sagging power lines in Cienfuegos after Dennis. Picture / Reuters

MIAMI - Deadly Hurricane Dennis strengthened into a monster storm capable of causing immense damage as it thundered toward the US Gulf Coast, forecast to hit land somewhere near the Alabama-Florida border.

Dennis, which killed 32 people in a rampage past Haiti and over Cuba before heading into the Gulf of Mexico early on Saturday, was carrying winds of 230km/h, with higher gusts, by early on Sunday.

The hurricane was set to hit land in an area still recovering from a battering last September by Hurricane Ivan.

Forecasters at the US National Hurricane Centre said on Sunday that Dennis, which intensified as it rolled north over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, had strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

Such storms carry winds of more than 208km/h and a threat of flooding up to 10km inland from low-lying coastal areas. They are are capable of causing major damage - shredding mobile homes, ripping roofs off buildings, seriously damaging doors and windows and felling big trees.

"This is going to do a lot of damage before it's all over," Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane centre, told CNN.

Authorities in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi urged more than 1.2 million people in vulnerable low-lying areas to leave their homes and many heeded the warning, streaming away in long lines of cars all day Saturday and draining gas stations dry.

Forecasters warned Dennis could bring a storm surge of up to 5.7 metres above normal tide levels, with large and dangerous battering waves, and rainfall of as much as 38cm in the area where it makes landfall.

Dennis threatened key oil and natural gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, where a quarter of US production comes from. Energy companies pulled hundreds of workers off oil rigs and shut down some crude and natural gas production.

Pensacola, a city where blue tarps still cover some houses whose roofs were damaged by Ivan, became a ghost town as residents fled the approaching storm.

Some people who decided to stay as Dennis approached shuttered their houses with recycled boards bearing the words "Go Away Ivan."

Ivan was one of an unprecedented four hurricanes to hit Florida in the same storm season. Florida officials said some 40,000 homes statewide had not been fixed yet.

"We're scared," said Lee Schoen, 48, a youth services worker who said she was boarding up her waterfront home on Mobile Bay in Alabama and getting out. "We're moving our valuables and things you can't replace and going to my mother-in-law's."

Before heading north through the Gulf, Dennis grazed southern Florida, brushing past the popular tourist island of Key West on the state's southern tip. State officials said 163,000 homes and businesses were without power by Saturday evening.

The hurricane hit Cuba on Friday with 240km/h winds and crumpled homes, uprooted trees and downed power lines. But its winds weakened to 145km/h as it crossed the island before roaring away from the island of 11 million people late on Friday night

Ten people were killed in Cuba and 22 in Haiti, where the storm caused flooding as it brushed past earlier in the week.

- REUTERS