By GUY ELLIS
The Associated Press

CASTRIES, St. Lucia - Hurricane Dean roared into the eastern Caribbean on Friday, tearing away roofs, flooding streets and causing at least three deaths. Winds hit 150 mph as it headed on a collision course with Jamaica and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where it is forecast to become a Category 5 storm.

The Atlantic season’s first hurricane built to a powerful Category 4 storm Friday night after crossing over the warm waters of the Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center in Miami forecast that Dean would become a Category 5 storm - with winds surpassing 155 mph - as it approaches Yucatan on Monday.

Dean could threaten the United States by Wednesday, forecasters said, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office suggested people get ready.

On tiny St. Lucia, fierce winds tore corrugated metal roofs from dozens of houses and a hospital’s pediatric ward, whose patients had been evacuated hours earlier. Police said a 62-year-old man drowned when he tried to retrieve a cow from a rain’swollen river.

The government on Dominica reported that a woman and her 7-year-old son died when a hillside soaked by Dean’s rains gave way and crushed the house where they were sleeping.

French authorities on the nearby island of Martinique said a 90-year-old man had died of a heart attack during the storm but it was unclear whether it was a factor.

read more HERE