Gustav howled into Cuba's Isla de Juventud as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane on Saturday while both Cubans and Americans scrambled to flee the path of the fast-growing storm, according to AP. Forecasters said it could gain yet more power, becoming a top-scale hurricane with 160 mph (255 kph) winds in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, before weakening a little ahead of a likely collision on Monday with the U.S. coast. More than 240,000 Cubans were being evacuated _ some hurriedly _ as the storm bore down on the nation's tobacco-rich western tip. Across the Gulf of Mexico, Americans made wary by Hurricane Katrina streamed out of New Orleans and other coastal cities. Gustav already has killed 81 people by triggering floods and landslides in other Caribbean nations. Lights flickered in Cuba's capital as shrieking winds blasted sheets of rain sideways though the streets and whipped angry waves against the famed seaside Malecon boulevard. State television stations went dark several times. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav had sustained winds of 145 mph (235 kph) _ with higher gusts _ as the heart of the storm began hitting Cuba's outlying island province of Isla de Juventud, where officials cut power to many areas. «The rain is not so intense, but there is a lot, a lot of wind,» said Isabel Alarcon from Nueva Gerona, the largest city on the island of 87,000 people. «The officials, they have told us the wind will be bad first but then the rain could cause flooding into the night.» The government's AIN news agency said officials were evacuating some 190,000 people from low-lying parts of westernmost Cuba, Pinar del Rio province, where the tobacco for Cuba's famed cigars is grown. AIN reported that 50,000 already had been evacuated farther east. Cuba halted all buses and trains to and from Havana where some shuttered stores had hand-scrawled «closed for evacuation» signs plastered to their doors. At those still open, residents formed lines to stock up on bread. Authorities boarded up banks, restaurants and hotels and cars waiting to fill their tanks stretched from gas stations.
