BY NANCY SAN MARTIN

After days of nail-biting tensions, Cuba on Tuesday ducked the worst of Hurricane Ivan, a Category 5 monster whose 150-mph winds and rain tore up roofs and power lines across a swath of western Cuba but apparently claimed no lives.

''It was like the devil,'' 56-year-old Maritza Quintana, a resident of Babineye near the island's southwestern coast, said of the storm that lashed western Cuba for 24 hours. ``It lasted so long; it was a phenomenon.''

In the westernmost province of Pinar del Río, all electricity remained off and roads were littered with downed pylons, power lines and trees. Flooding remained in isolated spots, some farm fields were flattened and some houses had lost their roofs to Ivan's winds.

Ivan's 12-foot tidal surges leveled dozens of houses in the coastal town of Cortés. Some homes were still inhabited even though Cuba's Civil Defense had reported that all its townspeople were evacuated long before the storm hit.

''It felt like the roof was going to fly off,'' said Tamara Echeverri, 28, a Cortés resident whose house was flooded by the waves after she moved to a neighbor's house. Her mother-in-law's home on the shoreline was flattened by the waves.

But many houses and buildings appeared to have been spared from total destruction and there were no reports of deaths or significant injuries hours after Ivan had brushed by Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico, heading for a projected landfall near the Mississippi-Alabama state line Thursday morning.

TREES, LINES DOWN

The provincial capital city of Pinar del Río showed no serious damage, though the surrounding area was littered with downed trees and power lines, flattened banana plantations and overflowing rivers. Two radio and TV towers also collapsed.

''The trees are all on the ground. The pines along the coast are all lying on the ground, like a giant rug,'' Osvaldo Pla, a ham radio operator for the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue, quoted a radio aficionado in the province as saying.

But a handful of vendors showed up at the provincial capital's farmers' market Tuesday to open for business.

''The agricultural fair opened in the morning, even though only four or five vendors were selling and with just a little merchandise,'' an artist and gallery director who went to the market told The Herald in a telephone interview.

''It was a very intense storm, but the people were very prepared,'' the man said. ``Those of us under 50 were told that we had never seen anything like what was coming. But, happily, the damage really has not been as bad as we thought it could be.''

The region's precious tobacco crop, the communist-run island's third-largest export, also appeared to have fared well.

AIRPORT TO REOPEN

In Havana, José Martí International Airport was scheduled to reopen and schoolchildren also were expected to return to classes today.

More than 100 water trucks moved about the capital dispensing drinking water where needed, and local bus service was spotty because most of the vehicles had been diverted to transport the record 1.6 million people evacuated from coastal and flood-prone areas.

According to Cuba's national meteorological service, Ivan's eye wall brushed Cape San Antonio -- on the western tip of Pinar del Río province -- between 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Monday, carrying sustained winds of up to 156 mph.

Winds of 120 mph flogged the province's westernmost city of Sandino, while in Santa Lucia and Isabel Rubio gusts of 84 mph were recorded, according to the newspaper Granma.

Ivan killed at least 68 people as it crossed the Caribbean. It was the second hurricane to hit Cuba in a month, after Hurricane Charley killed five and caused $1 billion in damages.

The unanticipated relief from catastrophic damage in Cuba from Ivan's fury led some to thank God.

''I was very nervous because the situation was very, very bad for awhile,'' a woman from Pinar del Río

told The Herald by telephone Tuesday. ``I was praying to God constantly that he would protect us and I believe he did.''

CASTRO HAILS `VICTORY'

Government officials chalked up the absence of significant damages to its warlike preparations, including mandatory evacuations and almost constant warnings on television and radio.

''At 5 a.m. police went into [the town of] Carlos Manuel with buses to take people out by force. The order was that they had to make sure not one life was lost,'' a man from Pinar del Río told The Herald by telephone.

Castro himself declared victory. ''We have turned a tragedy into a victory, as we usually do,'' the 78-year-old told official media during a visit to Pinar del Río.

But a group of Cubans at a roadside stop in the Pinar del Río town of San Juan y Martínez jokingly credited Ivan's miss to Castro's long-alleged powers of Santeria, Cuba's mixture of Catholic and African beliefs.

''He moved his shells,'' one of them said, referring to the snail and sea shells used by Santeria priests to divine the future and appeal to their gods.

Herald staff writers Alfonso Chardy, Elaine de Valle and Renato Pérez contributed to this report.