Haiti braces for Grace, Florida for Fred as storms brew

Tropical Depression Grace drenched earthquake-damaged Haiti on Monday, threatening to dump up to 15 inches of rain on a landscape where people are huddling in fields and searching for survivors.

Tropical Storm Fred grew stronger as it closed in on Florida's coast, and a third tropical system was swirling around Bermuda.

The US National Hurricane Center said Fred's maximum sustained winds increased to 65 miles per hour as its centre moved within 35 miles of Apalachicola, Florida, moving toward the coastal city at nine miles per hour.

Landfall was expected Monday afternoon on a path that will bring heavy rains to a swath of southeastern US this week.

Grace, meanwhile, was moving over Haiti's Tiburon Peninsula with top winds of 35 miles per hour, bearing down on the disaster area with what forecasters said could total 10 inches of steady rainfall, and still more in isolated areas.

The hurricane center warned that flash floods and mudslides were possible, especially along Hispaniola's southern coasts.

The oncoming storm couldn't come at a worse time for Haitians struggling to deal with the effects of Saturday's 7.2 magnitude earthquake, blamed for an estimated 1,300 deaths.

Grace was centred 70 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and moving west at 12 miles per hour.

It was expected to become a tropical storm again as it passes between Cuba and Jamaica Tuesday on the way to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

A tropical storm watch was in effect for the entire southern coast of Haiti, most of the southern coast of Cuba and the Cayman Islands.

Fred's main threats are rainfall and storm surge, the hurricane center said.

Forecasters expected Fred to sustain four to eight inches from Alabama across Florida's Big Bend and Panhandle, and even a foot of rain in isolated spots, while the surge could push seawater of between three to five feet onto the coast between Florida's Indian Pass and the Steinhatchee River.

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