Hurricane Sandy tears through Bahamas, weakens to Cat. 1

"We brought all of our animals inside," she said, though she added that a horse stayed outside. "She's a 40-year-old horse from the island. She's been through tons of hurricanes."

On Great Exuma island, guest house operator Veronica Marshall supplied her only customer with a flashlight and some food before Sandy bore down. She said she was confident that she and her business would make it through intact.

"I'm 73 years old and I've weathered many storms," she said.

Tropical storm conditions were possible for Florida's southeastern coast, the Upper Keys and Florida Bay by Friday morning.

Hurricane Sandy was expected to churn through the central and northwest Bahamas by Friday afternoon and then head northward off the U.S. coast.

With storm conditions projected to hit New Jersey with tropical storm-force winds Tuesday, there was a 90 percent chance that most of the U.S. East Coast would get steady gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Wednesday, U.S. forecaster Jim Cisco said.

In an announcement at the end of Cuba's Thursday night newscast, Cuban authorities said the island's 11 dead included a 4-month-old boy who was crushed when his home collapsed and an 84-year-old man in Santiago province.

Santiago, Cuba's second largest city near the eastern tip of the island, was spared the worst of the storm, which also slammed the provinces of Granma, Holguin and Las Tunas.

There were no reports of injuries at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but there were downed trees and power lines, said Kelly Wirfel, a base spokeswoman. Officials canceled a military tribunal session scheduled for Thursday for the prisoner charged in the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole.

In Haiti, Joseph Edgard Celestin, a spokesman for the civil protection office, said the country's death toll stood at nine, including three people who died while trying to cross storm-swollen rivers in southwestern Haiti. He did not provide specifics of how other people died.

Officials reported flooding across Haiti, where many of the 370,000 people still displaced by the devastating 2010 earthquake scrambled for shelter. More than 1,000 people were evacuated from 11 quake settlements, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Sandy was blamed for the death of an elderly man in Jamaica.

RECOMMENDED: Five ways to prep for a hurricane

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Associated Press writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica; Trenton Daniel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Ben Fox in Guantanamo, Cuba; Seth Borenstein in Washington; Juan McCartney in Nassau, Bahamas; and Fernando Gonzalez, Paul Haven, Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana contributed to this report.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

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