KINGSTON, Aug 19: Jamaica declared a curfew and troops patrolled the streets on Sunday as fiercely powerful hurricane Dean bore down on the island after killing five people earlier on its run through the Caribbean.

Tempers flared in shops where Jamaicans scrambled for last-minute emergency supplies as Dean began to lash the mountainous island with heavy rain. The government opened shelters and urged residents of low-lying areas to evacuate.

The hurricane was an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm, the second-highest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and could strengthen into a rare and potentially catastrophic Category 5 near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Jamaican soldiers and police patrolled the capital Kingston to prevent looting while the government declared a 48-hour curfew in industrial areas and bussed people to evacuation centres. Mudslides were reported north of Kingston and in the northeast parish of St. Mary.

Some residents of one low-lying seaport town close to Kingston refused to leave.

“We are going nowhere,” Byron Thompson said in the former buccaneer town of Port Royal, settled by pirate Henry Morgan in the 16th century. “In fact, if you come by here later today you will see me drinking rum over in that bar with some friends.”

Jamaica’s power company switched off power to most of the island but in Kingston it was still running.

Gas stations closed and shoppers scoured the shops still open for batteries, flashlights, canned tuna, rice and water.

Two men came close to blows in one shop after one tried to break in front of a long line.

“Too many of us have braved the weather to be out here in long lines, so people just can’t come here and cut in,” said Dave Brown, trying to buy bread and matches.

Campaigning for Aug 27 elections was halted.

Dean packed sustained winds of 230 km per hour and its eye was about 125 km southeast of Kingston at 1800 GMT).

Hurricane warnings were also in effect for the Cayman islands and parts of Haiti, and a tropical storm warning was issued for parts of Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Thousands of frightened tourists along Mexico’s Caribbean coast stood in line for hours at airports to flee before Dean’s expected arrival on Monday.

One man was killed in Haiti when a tree fell on a house in Murun, in the southwestern province of Grand Anse, said Silvera Guilleume, the area’s civil protection coordinator. That brought to at least five the number of people killed by Dean.—Reuters