MIAMI – Hurricane Ivan smashed apartment complexes to bits, washed away many homes and damaged nearly all the roofs in the Cayman Islands, residents of the battered Caribbean offshore finance hub said Tuesday. {{more}}
Ivan, churning through the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday toward United States shores, has killed at least 68 people and left a trail of devastation in the Caribbean. It reduced homes to rubble as it inflicted a near-direct hit on Sunday on the three tiny islands that make up the British territory of
45 000 people. No deaths were reported.
But damage was extensive. There was still no electricity or running water, residents said, and phone service was patchy.
“This is the first time in the modern history of the Cayman Islands that people have felt what it is like to be without modern conveniences for any extended period of time,” Cayman Net News, an online news service, reported.
Taxi driver Tabitha Piercy said many homes were destroyed on the eastern end of Grand Cayman, the largest island.
Mariners Cove, a complex of 20 apartments, was “washed into the street,” Piercy said.
“It was taken right off its foundations basically.”