Hurricane Ike Weakens to Category 2 over Cuba

Hurricane Ike weakened on Monday as it raged through Cuba, where it blew off roofs, toppled trees and flattened sugar cane fields like a giant lawn mower on a path toward the U.S. oil hub in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ike was expected to hit near eastern Texas, but a small deviation could threaten New Orleans, the city swamped in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,500 people and caused $80 billion in damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Gustav narrowly missed the low-lying city protected by floodwalls and levees.

The storm tore roofs off houses when it hit Britain’s Turks and Caicos Islands as a ferocious Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, and floods triggered by its torrential rains were blamed for 61 deaths in Haiti, where 500 were killed by Tropical Storm Hanna last week.

Ike weakened to a Category 2 storm with 100 mph (160 kph) after roaring ashore in northeastern Cuba late on Sunday near Punta Lucrecia in the state of Holguin, about 510 miles (823 km) southeast of Havana.

Cuba’s state-run television showed angry waves slamming into the sea wall and surging as high as nearby five-story apartment buildings before flooding the streets of the city of Baracoa near the eastern tip of the Communist-ruled island.

Forecasters said Ike would hit Havana as it left the island on Tuesday. Authorities prepared to evacuate tens of thousands of residents from crumbling tenements, low-lying neighborhoods and areas along the north coast.