Hurricane Dennis lashed Cuba and Haiti, leaving widespread damage and up to 18 deaths. Havana was left without electricity and thousands of acres of crops destroyed.

BY MAXWELL J. HAMILTON, ELAINE DE VALLE AND FRANCES ROBLES

Havana's 2.2 million people had virtually no electricity and only spotty phone service Saturday, one day after Hurricane Dennis killed 10 people on the island and became the deadliest storm to hit Cuba in 40 years.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro vowed a quick recovery, and his oil-rich friend in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez, promised all the aid needed after Dennis lashed the island from east to west for much of Thursday.

Wooden homes tumbled to the ground in piles of timber. Corrugated zinc sheeting used for roofs flew off, soaking homes and trashing streets. Sugar mills lost their walls, and radio towers toppled.

''The older houses didn't make it,'' one resident of a small town near Sancti Spiritus, in central Cuba, told the Herald in a phone interview. ``My mother's house came right down. What can you do but clean it up when the weather improves?''

Residents of Havana, barely missed by the eyewall of the powerful storm, reported few major damages but said much of the capital remained without electricity or water, with no word on when services would be resumed.

''The power is out, yes. It is out throughout all of Havana,'' said Regla María Batista, a waitress at Havana's Club 21.

And while Cuban Americans in Miami had little trouble reaching relatives in Havana on Friday, Saturday was a different story. Lines were apparently either too busy or down in many neighborhoods, including Bejucal, Boyeros, Cerro, Diez de Octubre, Marianao, Playa, Plaza and Santo Suárez.

Most of the worst damage was reported in the southeastern provinces of Granma and Santiago, brushed by Dennis Friday as it headed northwest toward Havana and later moved into the Gulf of Mexico early Saturday.

HOMES POUNDED

More than 15,000 houses that made up 76 percent of the houses in the Granma towns of Niquero and Pilón were damaged or destroyed by the storm's 150 mph winds, according to reports in the main provincial newspaper, La Demajagua.

Heavy winds also toppled a radio and television tower in Pilón, and some 50,000 residents from Niquero and Manzanillo in southwestern Cuba were evacuated to shelters, the Girón newspaper in neighboring Matanzas province reported.

The 10 who died -- eight in Granma and two in Santiago -- did not heed warnings to evacuate, officials said. Another death was the result of a baby suffocating while being pressed against the mother's chest, news reports said.

The death toll made Dennis the deadliest hurricane to hit Cuba since 1963, when Flora claimed about 1,200 lives. The 16 other hurricanes that struck the island since then killed a total of only 20 people -- thanks primarily to a nationwide system of alerts and mandatory evacuations that this week moved more than 1 million people to safer places.

A Communist Party official in Granma province reported to Castro on Friday that of the 128 homes in the coastal town of Cabo Cruz, only 11 remained standing. In Pilón, with 8,300 homes, 6,000 were damaged or destroyed. And in Niquero, 9,420 of the 11,776 homes were damaged, the official said.

Near the city of Santiago, the Great Baconao Park, a World Heritage Biosphere Reserve known for its prehistoric valley, a replica coffee plantation and a car museum, was brutally hit by the storm, according to the province's Sierra Maestra newspaper.

And Zulema Manzanares, a telephone operator at the Hotel Meliá in the city of Santiago, said the sea ''rose 15 feet in height'' and smashed into the beachside Hotel Bucanero a short drive from the provincial capital.

CLEANING UP

Municipal authorities were cleaning streets choked by fallen debris and fallen power lines Saturday, especially in the districts of Guamá and Tercer Frente, which were cut off from the city of Santiago when rising rivers made the local highway impassable.

If, indeed, there is a silver lining to every cloud, Dennis' was that its heavy rains may have ended a lengthy drought that had pummeled agricultural production in eastern Cuba and caused some international donors to send aid.

Dennis' rains filled some reservoirs in Granma to 32 percent of their total capacity and overloaded others near the mountain towns of Guisa and Paso Malo, La Demajagua reported. But they also destroyed more than 4,500 acres of bananas and 3,800 acres of corn, agricultural specialist Cecilio Chi Ricardo was quoted as saying in the newspaper.

Dennis smacked into Cuba Thursday near the southcentral city of Cienfuegos after passing just south of Haiti and just north of Jamaica and then barely brushing Granma province.

CONFLICTING NUMBERS

In Haiti, authorities confirmed the deaths of eight people and denied published reports of 100 missing.

A Washington Post report put the death toll at 22 but relief workers involved with Hurricane Dennis damage assessment could not confirm it.

''The official figure we have is eight,'' Alex Claudon, a disaster management delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross said Saturday night. ``Our sources have not been able to confirm a higher figure, not those working for the Red Cross, or the government or the United Nations.''

STILL REELING

Dennis also damaged crops and some homes, primarily in the south, but it seemed to largely spare the impoverished nation still trying to recover from Hurricane Jeanne last year that left some 3,000 dead.

Concern was rising in Havana, however, as the lack of electricity threatened to spoil the food in residents' fridges -- food that is often scarce and that Cubans must work hard to obtain.

''Better like this than to see it go bad,'' a retired sports coach in the Playa neighborhood said as he ate cold leftovers. He had bought the food with money sent by his son in Miami a couple of weeks ago. ``It's not much, but it could last us a couple of weeks or more -- if the electricity comes back.''

His wife told The Herald on the phone that she hoped the extra ice she had made by freezing water in plastic bags would help keep some items in the fridge at least a couple of days. If only the coach would stop opening the door.

''Leave that door closed!'' she was overheard yelling to him. ``Can't you see you're letting the cold air out?''

Herald staff writers Saudy Peña and Nancy San Martin and Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.