by Juliette Guilbert
MIAMI, Aug 12 (AFP) - Authorities in Cuba and the US state of Florida on Thursday ordered hundreds of thousands of people to flee the path of Hurricane Charley as it headed toward Havana and the US coast.
Charley`s winds strengthened to 170 kilometers (105 miles) an hour, while tropical storm Bonnie weakened as it hit the Florida coast, dumping heavy rains.
More than 200,000 residents and 2,000 foreign tourists were evacuated from western Cuba as authorities braced for Charley, the official Cuban press said.
Cuba`s Meteorology Institute said the hurricane would hit Havana, the western province of Pinar del Rio and Isla de la Juventud any time from 1:00 am (0600 GMT) Friday. Cuban civil defense issued a storm warning for the area.
Two million Havana residents braced for the storm with a military discipline born of fending off some 50 storms in 80 years. However, Havana`s decrepit buildings have not withstood a hurricane since Kate in 1985.
Authorities set up shelters with food and doctors, and shut off electricity as a precaution, local reports said.
Hurricane Charley missed Jamaica but came close to the Cayman Islands, the small British colony, forcing the closure of its main airport. Tourists helped sandbag shore defenses against huge waves, local media said.
The US National Hurricane Center warned of storm surge flooding of up to 10 feet (three meters) along the Florida coast, with potential flash floods and mudslides.
The NHC issued hurricane warnings for most of the Florida keys and for the southwest Florida coast, from East Cape Sable to Bonita Beach, which will likely be extended north to the Suwannee River late Thursday.
The hurricane was to hit the Florida coast on Friday morning, and the state government ordered hundreds of thousands of people to leave the Florida Keys, the string of islands off the state`s southern coast, now at the peak of its tourist season.
The mandatory evacuation order by the state government extended up Florida`s Gulf coast to Tampa Bay.
Residents rushed to buy plywood to board up windows of homes, restaurants and stores.
At KLI True Value Supply, a hardware store in Key Largo, one worker described the scene in the store early Thursday as "very, very busy" but said the mood was generally calm.
Hurricane watches in response to tropical storm Bonnie were canceled for the Florida panhandle, but tropical storm warnings remained in effect.
Oil companies were unable to pump about 420,000 barrels of oil Wednesday, equal to one-quarter of the total production from the Gulf of Mexico, the Department of Interior said.
The hurricane also forced ChevronTexaco to continue evacuating oil and gas platforms in the central and eastern gulf.
"The latest information I have is that we`ve evacuated 20 platforms, two drilling rigs," ChevronTexaco spokesman Matt Carmichael told AFP.
The hurricane meant ChevronTexaco missed 114,961 barrels of daily oil production and 169,551 million cubic feet of natural gas, Carmichael said, adding that 711 employees had been evacuated from platforms.
BP spokesman Hugh Depeland said the company had evacuated 26 oil platforms and eight drilling rigs in the gulf.
"We`ve removed about 1,600 people from our platforms in the central and eastern portions of the Gulf of Mexico," he said, declining to release figures on lost production.
Some staff were returning to the platforms on Thursday to determine whether they are safe, Depeland said, and depending on what Hurricane Charley does, BP will decide whether to return to the platforms.