A large and powerful Hurricane Dean bears down on Caribbean

Hurricane Dean tore through the eastern Caribbean islands of St. Lucia and Martinique on Friday, terrifying residents with powerful winds that ripped roofs from buildings, downed trees and knocked out power.

The eye of Dean, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, passed between St. Lucia and Martinique, two eastern Caribbean islands less than 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) apart, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

"We don't have a roof...everything is exposed. We tried to save what we could," said Josephine Marcelus in Morne Rouge, a town in the north of the French island of Martinique. "We sealed ourselves in one room, praying that the hurricane stops blowing over Martinique."

In Martinique's Epinay district, emergency officials cleared debris off roads to try to get to a family whose roof had blown off. Some roads were impassable from blown-over billboards and other debris.

"I saw the roof of a municipal building fly off. This is a very hard thing to experience right now. The wind is something impressive," said Louis Joseph Manscour, deputy mayor of Trinite, another town on the island.

Laurent Bigot, director of a Martinique crisis team, warned people to stay inside and be sensible or "we could start grieving for victims."

Panicked residents phoned a radio station.

"There is water in my house. There is water in my room. I don't know what to do. Everything is shaking, shaking, shaking. It's truly catastrophic," a distraught unidentified woman said in a phone call to Radio Martinique.

"It's blowing, it's blowing," a resident who gave her name as Janine told the radio. "You can feel its strength."

St. Lucia's acting prime minister, Stephenson King, announced that the country's two commercial airports were closing Thursday night as the storm's outer bands began moving through the islands. Martinique's main airport was also closed. Tourists hunkered down in shelters as 100 mph (161 kph) winds swept over the island.

"We may not be spared on this occasion as it appears that we are likely to experience the worst," King said.

The Category 2 hurricane was expected to intensify as it enters the warm waters of the Caribbean _ heading toward Jamaica.

It was too early to tell whether the storm would eventually strike the United States, but officials were gearing up for the possibility of the season's most severe storm yet.

"It's so far out, but it's not too early to start preparing," said Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

About 300 American medical students from Dominica's Ross University were stranded at the island's airport Thursday until family members hired private planes, said Dr. Mauricio Gomez, from the UCLA Medical Center in California, whose fiancee was among the students. Most arrived in Puerto Rico to await flights on Friday bound for the United States, Gomez said.

Hotels in Dominica and Martinique moved tourists from seaside rooms.

At the Jungle Bay Resort & Spa, on Dominica's Atlantic coast, about 18 guests spent Thursday night in a reinforced steel-and-concrete shelter, hotel spokeswoman Laura Ell said.

"Everyone's very calm but taking it seriously," she said.

Martinique officials set up cots at schoolhouse shelters while residents lined up at gas stations and emptied supermarket shelves.

"It's the first time I've seen this, all our water supply completely gone in less than two hours," said Jean Claude, a supermarket manager.

The government also canceled commemoration events planned for the 152 Martinique residents who died in a plane crash a year ago.

In St. Lucia, radio and television advisories urged people to stock up on canned food and fill their cars with gasoline. Volunteers knocked on doors to make sure people knew about the storm.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Dean would likely be a dangerous Category 3 hurricane by the time it reaches the central Caribbean. Forecasters say it appeared to be heading south of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola.

It predicted storm surge flooding at 2 feet to 4 feet (0.61 to 1.22 meters) above normal tide levels near the center of Dean as it passes over the Lesser Antilles and total possible rainfalls of 7 inches (17.8 centimeters) in mountainous areas.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT), hurricane warnings were in effect for the islands of St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica and Guadeloupe.

Tropical storm warnings have been issued for the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla and St. Maarten, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Water-logged Texas dealt with the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin, which dropped up to 7 inches (17.8 centimeters) of rain in parts of San Antonio and Houston. Officials throughout central and southern Texas braced for the possibility of 10 inches to 15 inches (25 to 38 centimeters) of rain by Friday morning.

At least four people died Thursday in Erin's thunderstorms.

Shell Oil Co. evacuated 188 people this week from offshore facilities in Erin's path and said Thursday it was already monitoring Dean.

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Associated Press writers Guy Ellis in Castries, St. Lucia, David McFadden in Roseau, Dominica and Maura Axelrod in Fort-de-France, Martinique contributed to this report.