Set.p 14, 2004
By Greg Frost

MIAMI (Reuters) - 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 on Tuesday.

Ivan, churning through the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday toward U.S. 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.

"Hundreds of homes are gone -- they are rubble. Basically, walls have caved in," she told Reuters in a telephone interview. "In my apartment the roof is missing. I have gone in to salvage what I can."

Mariners Cove, a complex of 20 apartments, was "washed into the street," Piercy said.

"It was taken right off its foundations basically. Totally gone, not one unit left," she said.

FISH WASHED INTO HOMES

Piercy reckoned that 95 percent of homes on Grand Cayman suffered roof damage -- echoing a figure given by the British government in London.    

Peter O'Neill, a banker who has lived on Grand Cayman for six years, said Ivan lashed the island with winds of up to 200 mph and pushed the seas far inland.

"It sent a wave across the island. Fish were found three miles inland in people's homes," O'Neill said in a telephone interview, adding authorities had imposed a curfew as a result of looting during Sunday's hurricane strike.

Before the line went dead, O'Neill said it may take weeks and maybe months for crews to restore power to all parts of the island.

Two British ships were off the coast of Grand Cayman, the HMS Richmond and the auxiliary fleet tanker Wave Ruler.

Paul Parrack, a spokesman for the Royal Navy, said two boats from the HMS Richmond managed to go ashore at Grand Cayman on Tuesday afternoon despite very rough weather.

The island's hospital is fully functional and it did not appear medical teams would need to go ashore, Parrack said. (Additional reporting by Jim Loney)
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6235630