August 28, 2008 Tourists flee as Gustav churns toward Jamaica Play video

(NECN) - Tropical Storm Gustav surged toward hurricane force on Thursday as it drove

toward Jamaica and aimed for the Cayman islands, prompting evacuations of

tourists and offshore oil workers.

Impoverished Haitians scrambled for food in the storm's wake, while New

Orleans kept nervous watch, three years after Katrina devastated the city.

Gustav - the cause of flooding and mudslides that killed 23 in Haiti and the

Dominican Republic - was nearly stationary about 80 miles (130 kilometers)

east of Jamaica's low-lying capital, but it was expected to run west-

southwest later in the day, very close to the shore.

It's top sustained winds were just below hurricane strength at about 70

miles per hour (110 kilometers per hour), according to the National

Hurricane Center in Miami.

In the low-lying Cayman Islands, where Gustav is expected to hit on Friday,

tourists flocked to the airport to get out before the storm.

Stacey McLaughlan of Albany, New York, said she and her husband were told to

leave their resort by noon on Thursday or prepare to move

to a public shelter.

"If we didn't get out, we would have had to have gone to a shelter tonight,"

McLaughlan said.

Cayman Airways pilot Chris Witt said a number of evacuation flights had been

scheduled.

"We're doing evacuation flights. We did a bunch yesterday, we're doing a

bunch today,"

Gustav's projected track pointed directly at the Cayman Islands, an offshore

banking center where residents boarded up homes and stocked up on emergency

supplies.

Theresa Foster, a Georgetown resident said her family had not been prepared

when hurricane Ivan hit the island in 2004, but they will be prepared for

Gustav.

"In Ivan we didn't have metal shutters on our front doors, so our front

doors blew open and we had mud and water and fish and everything else, so we

were sure to put the shutters on this time," she told AP Television.

But forecasters said Gustav might slip between Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula

and the western tip of Cuba on Sunday, then march toward a Tuesday collision

with the US Gulf Coast - anywhere from south Texas to the Florida panhandle.

The storm was projected to become a major Category 3 hurricane over warm and

deep Gulf waters, sending oil prices jumping above 120 US dollars a barrel

on Thursday on fears of production slowdowns.

Some projections showed Gustav taking a path toward Louisiana and other Gulf

states devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago.

New Orleans began planning a possible mandatory evacuation, hoping to

prevent the chaos it saw after Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago

Friday.

Meanwhile, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were still getting heavy

rain on Thursday, as rising waters damaged many homes.

Gustav hit Haiti as a hurricane on Tuesday, causing floods and landslides

that killed 15 people on Haiti's deforested southern peninsula, where it

dumped 12 inches (30 centimeters) or more of rain.

A landslide buried eight people, including a mother and six of her children,

in the neighboring Dominican Republic.