Hurricane Dean landed down onto the Caribbean on a track that could take it near Jamaica as a dangerously powerful storm next week, officials said. Dean reached the Caribbean Sea through the narrow St. Lucia Channel after a long journey across the Atlantic and threatened to become a powerful Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale in the area of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in four days. The first hurricane of the Atlantic season lifted the roof off the pediatric wing at Victoria Hospital in St. Lucia's capital, Castries. Patients had been moved from that area and there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries on the former British colony of 170,000 people, said Dawn French, the island's emergency management director. By 8 a.m., Dean was 50 miles west-southwest of Martinique, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was moving to the west at a brisk 23 mph (37 kph), forecasters said, a speed that would take it well clear of the Lesser Antilles within a few hours.
