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Keys May Evacuate Tourists Before Fay Arrives

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The Associated Press

Published: August 17, 2008

As residents and tourists in the Florida Keys prepared Saturday for Tropical Storm Fay, officials in Monroe County are considering issuing an evacuation order for tourists.

If the order is issued, tourists will be asked to leave the Keys today. A decision on whether to require all residents to evacuate was to come, county spokeswoman Becky Herrin said.

Fay is expected to begin battering the island chain with hurricane-force winds as soon as Monday. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Saturday night the storm was located southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, and was heading west.

Keys emergency officials often take the precaution of ordering early evacuations when a storm threatens, because traffic can back up for miles on the single highway to Florida's mainland.

Besides the threat of damage from high winds, most of the islands sit at sea level and would likely get flooded by Fay's storm surge. Flooding from the storm on Saturday killed four people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

In Haiti, Fay has already flooded rice fields in the Artibonite Valley, Haiti's most fertile region, according to reports from Radio Ginen. And Fay's heavy winds destroyed banana crops in Arcahaie, north of the capital, although it is unclear how many acres were affected, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of Haiti's civil protection department.

A tropical storm warning has been issued for the Cayman Islands, and a tropical storm watch remains in effect for the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Cuba's government said hurricane watches were in effect for the provinces of Villa Clara, Cinefuegos, Matanzas, Camaguey, Ciego de Avila and Sancti Spiritus. Fay's path was expected to take it over the southern coast of eastern Cuba late Saturday or today and over the island's west near Havana tonight or Monday.

Officials in Cuba's eastern province of Santiago met to discuss ordering tourists to evacuate low-lying coastal hotels and camp sites, the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported on its Web site.

There were no official details on how many tourists had been evacuated, but a receptionist at the Melia Santiago hotel, located in Cuba's second-largest city, said it was preparing to receive a "small number" of tourists evacuated from coastal areas. She said she was not authorized to be identified by name in the foreign media.

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