Havana/Buenos Aires - Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike represent a destructive march through the alphabet as the lethal sequence of tropical storms that have hit the Caribbean.

As a result of the four consecutive storms in as many weeks, Haiti has a death toll of close to 350 with scores more people missing while Cuba has four dead after having evacuated about 1.6 million people.

Winds, rains and floods have caused extensive agricultural and infrastructure damage to both Caribbean nations; however, their responses to the storms have been as different as their cultures.

Havana/Port-au-Prince, Haiti - The whole of Cuba was in a state of emergency as Hurricane Ike looked likely to batter Havana Tuesday as well as western sections of the island after already leaving four dead.

More than 24 hours after making landfall Sunday night at Cabo Lucrecia in the east, Ike continued to lash the Caribbean island with sustained winds of 130 kilometres per hour.

Havana - Hurricane Ike made landfall in Cuba, packing maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometres per hour, after sweeping destruction across Haiti, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

The eye of the storm hit about 10 pm Sunday (0200 GMT Monday) near Punta Lucrecia in Hulguin province, the Cuban weather service said.

Havana - Cuba on Sunday had evacuated 250,000 people ahead of Hurricane Ike, a monster storm carrying 215-kilometre-per-hour winds toward the Caribbean island's eastern regions, local media reported.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said the storm was about 155 kilometres east-north-east of Guantanamo Cuba, where the US maintains its military prison for terrorist suspects.

Ike was an "extremely dangerous" category 4 storm expected to hit eastern and central Cuba Sunday evening and central Cuba by late Monday, weather experts said.

Washington - Residents of the Caribbean Turks and Caicos islands began surveying damage on Sunday following the devastating impact of Hurricane Ike, as the "extremely dangerous" category 4 storm continued on its path toward Cuba and Florida Keys.

At 8 a.m. (1300 GMT) Ike had winds of over 215 kilometres per hour, just east of Grand Inagua in the Bahamas.

Residents of Turks and Caicos islands said on Sunday that the worst there had passed, but the damage looked "pretty huge."

Speaking to US news channel CNN, Audley Astwood, a reporter at a radio station on Grand Turk island said that "it looks very dismal outside."