Hurricane Michelle Barrels Across Cuba; Florida Keys Brace

Michelle, the most powerful hurricane to hit Cuba in more than half a century, plowed across the Caribbean island Sunday, pummeling it with torrential rains and howling winds.

Authorities in Cuba had already evacuated 750,000 people from low-lying areas, and 625,000 head of livestock were herded to higher ground.

Sustained winds of 124 mph were reported at Cayo Largo, a weather station off Cuba’s southern coast, and forecasters predicted that the storm could dump 10 to 20 inches of rain, causing widespread flooding. Waves along Cuba’s southern shoreline were expected to surge as much as 20 feet.

“We are prepared for the worst,” said Dr. Virginia Huergo, relief coordinator for the Cuban Red Cross.

Forecasters said the storm had probably peaked by late Sunday.

To the north, in the Florida Keys, winds increased steadily Sunday to reach over 50 mph on Sand Key. Authorities have ordered all 90,000 residents and tourists in the archipelago to leave, but many are staying on. Key West Mayor Jimmy Weekley estimated that no more than 20% of his city’s 25,000 people had departed.

Michelle was not expected to score a direct hit on the Keys but could subject the chain of low-lying islands off the Florida peninsula to hurricane-force winds and a storm surge that could make seas 2 to 3 feet higher.

Krissy Williams, a meteorological technician at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Michelle should veer to the east as it exits the northern coast of Cuba, carrying it away from the Keys and toward the Bahamas.

The hurricane has also been picking up speed, reaching 13 mph at midday Sunday. “This is better for Cuba because it won’t sit there and dump rain,” Williams said.

Michelle is rated a Category 4 hurricane on a scale of 1 to 5. According to meteorologists, it is the mightiest storm to strike Cuba since the hurricane of Oct. 17-18, 1944.

That hurricane, which killed 310 people, followed a path similar to Michelle’s and caused seawater to flood Cuba as far as eight miles inland. Under the present Communist authorities, civil defense for hurricanes in Cuba is much better organized, and conducted on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Thousands of Red Cross volunteers were also reportedly helping officials in the evacuation efforts for Michelle.

Packing sustained winds of 135 mph near its center, the hurricane made its landfall on Cuba’s southern coast at the Zapata Peninsula, near the Bay of Pigs in central Matanzas province, at about 4 p.m. local time (1 p.m. PST) Sunday.

Michelle was moving northeast, and meteorologists at the Miami hurricane center predicted that it would reach the Bahamas by midday today.

In Havana, well to the west of the storm’s track, streets were nearly deserted as heavy rain and fierce winds drove residents indoors, news reports said. More than 150,000 people in flood-prone neighborhoods of the Cuban capital had been ordered to leave their homes.

Foreign tourists whose beach-side resorts lay in the oncoming storm’s path were flown to Havana.

Last week, Michelle wreaked havoc in Central America and Jamaica, where it killed at least 12 people and left hundreds of thousands of others homeless. In Nicaragua, where 100,000 people are now without shelter, about 50 people were still missing after 10-foot-high flood waters swamped towns on the Caribbean coast.

Though the hurricane was expected to give Florida a wide berth, winds today may rise to 60 mph and higher on Florida’s Atlantic coast, forecasters warned. Playing it safe, authorities in the Miami area ordered public schools closed for the day and some other municipal services suspended.

“Let’s call it a hurricane day,” Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas told reporters. “Best-case scenario: If it turns out to be a beautiful day, you know what? Enjoy it with your family.”

If Michelle does adhere to its predicted track, it will mean that no hurricane in the past two years has made landfall on the U.S. mainland. Forecasters said such a gap between hurricanes is so rare that there is only a 3% chance of it happening.

Because it is difficult to make telephone calls to Cuba, Spanish-language radio stations in Miami whose broadcasts can be heard on the island opened their microphones Sunday to Floridians who wanted to send messages to loved ones.

“Don’t worry,” one woman, who gave her name as Maritza, told relatives in Havana. “God is with Cuba.”

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Times researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami and the Associated Press contributed to this report.