GUST OF WINDS IN CARIBBEAN

Added: (Tue Aug 26 2008)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Tropical Storm Fay Kills 8 People

KEY WEST, Fla. - Tourists boarded the last plane out, shop owners shut their doors and palm trees waved with the gust of winds as Tropical Storm Fay began to bear down on the Florida Keys on Monday after taking lives of at least eight people in the Caribbean holidays.

About 25,000 tourists evacuated, Monroe County Mayor said, but some restaurants and bars were open, though the crowd was thinner considerably. Despite warnings of a strong storm possibility, some hurricane-seasoned residents refused to leave.

Willie Dyke s, 58, and friend Essy Pastrana, 48, dwell in Key West on a sailboat, and said they are not going anywhere. They were filling up cans of gas on Monday morning and getting supplies like water, whiskey and food.

"We're gonna ride it out," Dykes said, his fluffy white beard blowing sideways in the wind. "We're not worried about it. We've seen this movie before."

Fay, the storm of the 2008 Atlantic season in caribbean holidays, killed five people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In Haiti, a bus turned upside down while driving across a river along with rain, which created fears that about 30 people were killed. U.N. police spokesman Fred Blaise announced later that 41 people had escaped, but peace keepers witnessed bodies of two children flowing in the Riviera Glace. They also found a man’s body that drowned in the river and was not on the bus, he said.

"We don't want people to focus on the exact track. This is a broad, really diffuse storm. All the Florida Keys and the entire Florida peninsula is going to feel the effects of this storm, no matter where the center makes landfall," he said.

"We want every, every Floridian and guest to be a survivor," the governor said. "I know it's only a tropical storm but we take it seriously."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic opponent Barack Obama will also speak.

In 2005, Key West was affected seriously last time by a hurricane during Caribbean holidays. The town however was saved from huge wind damage, but the storm flooded hundreds of houses and some businesses. The worst storm to hit the island so far was a Category 4 hurricane in 1919 that took lives of about 900 people; many were offshore on ships that drowned.