180k evacuated in Cuba as hurricane Elsa barrels in

Cuba evacuated as many as 180,000 people on Sunday amid fears of flooding from tropical storm Elsa as it battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.

The storm is expected to make landfall on Monday afternoon.

Elsa, with sustained winds of 60mph around 60 miles from Cabo Cruz, Cuba, was expected to move over Central Cuba on Monday, according to an advisory from the National Hurricane Centre.

Most of those evacuated have moved into homes of their relatives, while those living in the mountainous areas moved into caves that were prepared for emergencies for safety, Associated Press reported.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Saturday declared a state of emergency in at least 15 counties, including Miami-Dade, where a high-rise condo collapsed last week.

The National Hurricane Centre in Miami said tropical storm Elsa’s centre was about “270 miles southeast of Havana and moving northwest at 15 mph.”

“Its maximum sustained winds had strengthened a bit to about 65 mph,” it added. However, the storm is expected to gradually weaken while passing over central Cuba, it informed.

“After Elsa emerges over the Florida Straits and the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, some slight re-strengthening is possible,” it said.

Wilfredo Munoz Lopez, who rents rooms to tourists on Cabo Cruz, told Reuters that “there is a lot of wind and waves of a metre or more. There is no one out. Everyone is in their home or shelters, as we expect it to get worse.”

There is a warning of intense rain for days in Cuba, as per the weather forecast, with experts predicting the worst in central and “perhaps western Cuba.”

A Cuban homemaker, Misladi Pulgar in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountains, inland from Cabo Cruz, was quoted by Reuters as saying: “There is not much wind but a lot of rain, even for this area. They evacuated everyone living near the rivers and reservoirs.”

Rafael Carmenate, a volunteer for the local Red Cross who lives facing the beach in Santa Cruz del Sur, told the Associated Press: “We have a little water — showers. The sea has not intruded. It’s cloudy and gusty.”

According to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, one person has died in St Lucia. A 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman died Saturday in separate events in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Centre.

Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, told the media that “Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record and also broke the record as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane, clocking in at 31 mph Saturday morning.”

The Weather Channel reported: “A few tornadoes and waterspouts are also possible in the Florida peninsula on Monday and Tuesday given the potential increase in wind shear.”

It added: “These impacts could then spread into other parts of the Southeast Wednesday into Thursday. Rain and thunderstorms may be lopsided to the east side beginning Tuesday.”

Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane until Saturday morning, causing widespread damage on several eastern Caribbean islands on Friday as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, reports said. Barbados was hardest hit where more than 1,100 people reported damage, including 62 homes that had collapsed.

Meanwhile, the government promised to find and fund temporary housing to avoid clustering people in shelters amid the coronavirus pandemic, AP reported.