Hurricanes

CAMAGUEY, Cuba (AP) ― Crashing waves and a powerful sea surge from Hurricane Paloma destroyed hundreds of homes in Cuba, the government said Sunday as the cyclone weakened into a tropical storm.

On an island still reeling from the destruction of two recent hurricanes, early damage reports were limited. But state media said the late-season storm toppled a major communications tower, interrupted electricity and phone service and sent sea water almost a mile (1.5 kilometers) inland, ravaging a coastal community near where it made landfall

No storm-related deaths were immediately reported.

Vicente de la O of Cuba's national power company told state television that damage to the power grid was far less than that caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike in late August and early September.

Paloma roared ashore near Santa Cruz del Sur late Saturday as an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane but quickly lost strength, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Forecasters said the Cuban and Bahamian governments discontinued all warnings associated with Paloma by Sunday morning.

Waves more than 10 feet (3 meters) high leveled about 50 modest houses along the coast of Santa Cruz del Sur. Civil Defense authorities said altogether 435 homes in the community were destroyed.

Javier Ramos told The Associated Press he rebuilt his simple wood-frame house in the town after Hurricane Ike, only to watch Paloma flatten it again.

"At least we're alive, but my wife hasn't seen this yet," Ramos said as he scavenged bits of clothing and smashed dishes in his front yard. "I don't know how she's going to react. It's going to be terrible."

Elsewhere in town, Angel Betancourt was skinning a drowned goat. "The water was up to a meter high and the goat drowned," he said. "What else can we do? We're going to eat it."

Touring Santa Cruz del Sur on Sunday, Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura said the area was among the hardest-hit nationwide.

In the nearby community of Jagua, Herienso Rondon, a 50-year-old retired day laborer, said he was still trying to repair damage from Ike when Paloma tore away his wooden house's roof and pulverized the belongings inside, including a meager bed and mattress.

"I don't have any hope," he said. "After Hurricane Ike (government officials) came to visit me and said they had no way to help and I had to buy the wood for repairs.

"I have no money," said Rondon, who gets a monthly pension of 158 pesos, about $7.50.

Paloma steadily lost strength as it meandered across Cuba on Sunday and was expected to reach the central Bahamas as a weak area of low pressure Monday morning. The storm was expected to unravel and not threaten the southern tip of Florida.

Across central and eastern Cuba, more than 500,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas as Paloma approached. Cuba regularly moves people en masse to higher ground before tropical storms and hurricanes, preventing major loss of life.

In the city of Camaguey, 79-year-old Rosa Perez waited out the storm at a government shelter with her 83-year-old husband and about 900 others from Santa Cruz del Sur.

Perez was a toddler when she watched as her mother, older sister and about 40 other relatives were swept away in a storm surge during a 1932 hurricane that killed about 3,000 people.

"We're just waiting to see what happens to our home and our beach," she said.

At 1500 GMT (10 a.m. EST) Sunday, Paloma's center was near Camaguey. Once as strong as 145 mph (230 kph), the storm's winds had weakened to 60 mph (95 kph). Paloma was drifting northeast at about 2 mph (4 kph).

In an essay published in state media Saturday, former President Fidel Castro warned that Paloma could slow Cuba's recovery from Gustav and Ike, which caused about $9.4 billion in damage and destroyed nearly a third of the island's crops.

Earlier, Paloma downed trees, flooded low-lying areas and damaged roofs in the Cayman Islands. But residents there appeared to weather the hurricane unscathed.

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