With Cuba, the Cayman Islands and southern Florida on high alert , Hurricane Ivan continues to lash Jamaica's coast today, although it is not expected to make a direct hit on the island meteorologists said.
Sporadic gunfire and looting was reported in violence-prone Kingston, but police could not confirm that and the telephone service appeared to fail as Ivan passed.
Armed troops, on high alert and carrying assault rifles, were patrolling Kingston, which was blacked out like the rest of the island by utility officers hoping to minimize damage.
Ivan's eye "wobbled toward the west for the past few hours," bringing it within 35 miles of Kingston but keeping it off the island, according to the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
The death toll elsewhere in the Caribbean rose to 37, the latest victim an eight-year-old boy who died on Friday of head injuries sustained when the storm destroyed his home in Grenada on Tuesday.
At 1 a.m. Jamaican time (07.00 Irish time), Ivan was centred about 50 miles southwest of Kingston, expected to resume a west-northwest motion near 10 mph.
Hurricane-force winds extended 60 miles and tropical storm-force winds another 175 miles.
The Cayman government posted a hurricane warning and urged residents of all three Caymanian islands to prepare "as for direct impact."
Cuba declared a hurricane watch last night after its leader, Fidel Castro, warned residents to brace themselves. "Whatever the hurricane does, we will all work together" to rebuild, he said.
In South Florida, long lines reappeared at petrol stations and shoppers swarmed home building stores and supermarkets. Forecasters said Ivan could tear through the Keys as early as Monday. The wobble that saved a direct hit on Jamaica could move it west into the Gulf of Mexico.
Howling winds and sheets of horizontal rain crashed around the capital in the south after Patterson declared a state of emergency and pleaded with the half million people considered in danger - about one in five islanders - to get to shelters. Most refused for fear abandoned homes would be robbed.
"I'm not saying I'm not afraid for my life but we've got to stay here and protect our things," said Lorna Brown, 49, pointing to a stove, television, cooking utensils and large bed crowded into a one-room concrete home on the beach at the northwestern resort of Montego Bay.