Ike's pelting rains couldn't have come at a worse time for Haiti. The Mirebalais bridge collapsed in the floods, cutting off the last land route into Gonaives, Agriculture Minister Joanas Gay told state-run Radio Nationale. Half the homes in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, were already under water.

Gay warned residents in the surrounding Artibonite valley to evacuate immediately because an overflowing dam would have to be opened, sending more water into the Gonaives floodplain. And in Gonaives itself, the waters were rising even as aid groups struggled to reach people with little or no access to food or water for days.

Heavy rains also pelted the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, where about 4,000 people were evacuated from northern coastal towns. One man was crushed by a falling tree.

The US National Hurricane Center projected Ike's eye would strike Cuba's northern coast Sunday night and possibly hit Havana, the capital of 2 million people with many vulnerable old buildings, by Monday night.

More than 224,000 people are expected to be evacuated before Ike hit in the central-eastern province of Camaguey alone, Cuba's government said. Foreign tourists were pulled out from vulnerable beach resorts, workers rushed to protect coffee plants and other crops, and plans were under way to distribute food and cooking-oil to disaster areas.

At the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in southeast Cuba, all ferries were secured and beaches were off limits. The military said cells containing the detainees – about 255 men suspected of links to the Taliban and al-Qaida – are hurricane-proof.

"People have been forewarned for a day," Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Robert Lamb said. "It's starting to get breezy."

Where Ike goes after Cuba was hard to predict, leaving millions from Florida to Mexico worrying where it will strike.

"These storms have a mind of their own," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said as tourists and then residents evacuated the Keys along a narrow highway.

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepared for the possibility of more havoc only days after an historic, life-saving evacuation of more than 2 million people from Hurricane Gustav.

"Our citizens are weary and they're tired and they have spent a lot of money evacuating," Nagin worried. "It will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav."

Off Mexico's Pacific coast, Tropical Storm Lowell was moving away from land.

(Agencies via China Daily September 8, 2008)