Storm buffets Cuba, hurricane warnings for Florida

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Gusty winds and driving rain buffeted eastern Cuba early on Sunday as Tropical Storm Fay neared the island while U.S. authorities issued a hurricane watch for parts of the Florida coast.

Cuban officials ordered evacuations from flood-prone areas of coastal provinces where Fay was expected to come ashore on Sunday before crossing the Caribbean nation and heading toward Florida as a likely hurricane.

As of 5 a.m. EDT (0800 GM), Fay had top winds of near 50 miles per hour (80 km per hour) and was close to the Cuban coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Florida said.

Weather reports showed the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay was getting rain and winds gusting up to 52 mph (83 kph).

Fay was cruising west at 14 mph (22 kph) across very warm waters -- 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 C), said an official at Cuba's Meteorological Institute -- and therefore was likely to strengthen before crossing the island.

It was possible Fay would clip the communist island twice, in the southeast near Guantanamo Bay, and again in the center as it began a turn to the northwest and eventually the north.

The U.S. hurricane center did not expect Fay to become a hurricane, which has top sustained winds of at least 74 mph (118 kph), until it passed through Cuba.

Cuban forecasters predicted rains of up to 8 inches (20 cm) from the storm.

FIVE DEAD

Heavy rains from the storm killed at least five people on the island of Hispaniola, shared by the Dominican Republic, a major tourist magnet, and impoverished Haiti.

A 34-year-old Dominican woman died and two nephews, aged 13 and 5, were missing after their truck was engulfed by flood waters raging through a gully 86 miles (140 km) east of Santo Domingo, the Caribbean country's emergency operations center said.

Four people died in Haiti, at least three of them drowning in rain-swollen rivers, said Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of the country's civil protection office.

The hurricane center said Fay, after emerging from Cuba on Monday, was likely to brush the Florida Keys and hit the west coast of Florida as a hurricane on Tuesday.

A hurricane watch was in effect for the Florida Keys and along a south-western section of the mainland, meaning that hurricane conditions were possible within 36 hours.

The state government of Florida declared an emergency to free up federal funds to deal with the approaching storm and the authorities in the low-lying Florida Keys said they expected to order tourists to evacuate on Sunday morning.

The state's most densely populated areas around Miami and Fort Lauderdale, in the southeast, were not out of the line of fire should the storm steer more to the east than expected. The National Hurricane Center said it had become difficult to predict the exact path of the storm with different computer programs producing varying scenarios.

Areas of the Gulf of Mexico where around a quarter of U.S. oil and 15 percent of U.S. natural gas are produced did not appear to be at immediate risk.

But long-range storm forecasts are prone to error, especially when it comes to intensities, and Shell Oil Co said it was pulling 200 workers from offshore operations in the eastern Gulf of Mexico ahead of the storm.

In addition to the hurricane alert in Cuba, tropical storm warnings and watches were in effect for the central Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica. (Additional reporting by Michael Christie in Miami, Erwin Seba in Houston, Manuel Jimenez in Santo Domingo and Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince; Editing by Alan Elsner)