By NEWSDAY REPORTERS Saturday, August 18 2007

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AS HURRICANE Dean tore through the Eastern Caribbean islands of St Lucia, Martinique and Dominica yesterday, in Trinidad one woman was killed in Mayaro as a result of feeder bands and rough seas and a man drowned also in Mayaro in the swirling, rough waters. (SEE STORY ON THIS PAGE).

At Mayaro, 41-year-old Althea Layne, a mother of 14, died when the family boat which she was trying to secure from the turbulent sea, struck her in the chest. Relatives said Layne had gone outside the family’s Sea Wall, Guayaguayare home at about 5 am, to help husband Paul Ali secure their boat.

Neither Ali nor Layne’s children were at home yesterday when a Newsday reporter visited the family’s home. However, the boat was seen out at sea bobbing with the currents.

At Chaguaramas, pounding six-foot waves and strong winds damaged the pier at Power Boats and boats anchored there. Visiting yachties worked together to assist each other weather the storm and minimise damage to their boats.

Meanwhile in Mayaro, Layne’s niece Emily Joseph said she heard from Ali, that Layne was “helping pull the boat in” when the strong currents and high waves rocked the boat which struck her in the chest. Joseph said relatives were alerted and when they arrived at the beach, Layne was bleeding from the nose and mouth. She died shortly after.

Layne’s brother-in-law, Yusuff Ali, who is a lifeguard at the Mayaro Beach, explained that the waters were rough as a result of the strong waves associated with Hurricane Dean. In St Lucia, roofs were ripped off at a hospital and homes. Trees were felled by the wind and a boat was flung onto a road. The first hurricane of the Atlantic season, packing 100 mph winds, tore the roof off the children’s ward at Victoria Hospital in Castries, the capital of St Lucia, but patients had already been evacuated and no injuries were reported at the hospital.

However, a 62-year-old man who was reportedly trying to save a cow from a rain-swollen river in St Lucia, was one of two reportedly killed on that island. With utility poles down, the power company turned off electricity on the island to prevent anyone from being electrocuted.

St Lucia state radio reported the capital was flooded and cluttered with wind-blown debris. Boulders from a sea wall were shoved onto roads by the force of storm surges. A boat also sat in the road, lifted from the sea by the storm. The eye of Dean passed between St Lucia and the French island of Martinique, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

“We don’t have a roof...everything is exposed. We tried to save what we could,” said Josephine Marcelus in Morne Rouge, a town in northern Martinique. “We sealed ourselves in one room, praying that the hurricane stops blowing over Martinique.”

In Martinique’s Epinay district, emergency officials cleared debris off roads to try to get to a family whose roof blew off. Some roads were impassable from blown-over billboards and other debris. Laurent Bigot, director of a Martinique crisis team, warned people to stay inside or “we could start grieving for victims.”

In Dominica, just north of Martinique, a woman and her seven-year-old son reportedly died when a hillside soaked by Dean’s rains gave way and crushed the house in which they were sleeping. The Category Three hurricane was expected to intensify as it enters the warm waters of the Caribbean - heading towards Jamaica. Authorities in Jamaica were bracing for a major hit as they were placed under a hurricane watch at 5 pm. At 5 pm Dean was centred about 840 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, and was moving west at 21 mph. The storm’s maximum sustained winds were 125 mph. Met officials said that by tomorrow, Dean could be a Category Four or Five Hurricane as it moved towards Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The hurricane swirled across the Caribbean but Trinidad and Tobago escaped its wrath. The Mayaro drowning occurred although the Met Office warned persons to stay out of the water.