Hurricane Ivan has killed at least 20 people on the tiny spice island of Grenada as it swept through the Caribbean heading northwest.
Ivan, a dangerous Category 4 storm on a five-step scale of hurricane intensity, hit Grenada, a volcanic island of 90,000 people in the southeastern Caribbean on Tuesday, flattening or badly damaging homes and cutting power.
The airport in the former British colony was closed and phone service was interrupted, so the extent of the damage began to emerge only last night. Looting has hampered relief efforts
A videotape shot from a British naval helicopter showed widespread destruction with buildings flattened, roofs ripped off houses and major flooding.
Grenada's capital, St George's, was badly damaged, and the storm destroyed the island's emergency operations centre, the prime minister's residence, the prison, many schools, and damaged the main hospital.
"I can estimate about 85 per cent devastation," Mr Kenrick Fullerton, a member of parliament in Grenada, told a radio station in Trinidad.
Crews cleared the airport runway so emergency flights could land, but looting broke out and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) urged aid groups to send only essential personnel until police could guarantee their safe passage.
Police, troops and ham radio operators were en route from neighbouring islands to help relieve what CDERA called a serious security situation.