Residents search for valuables Sunday through the rubble of their houses destroyed by Hurricane Paloma in Santa Cruz del Sur, Cuba. Paloma weakened into a tropical storm over Cuba on Sunday after flooding the southern coast with crashing waves and a powerful storm surge on an island still reeling from two recent hurricanes.

Camaguey, Cuba ? Hurricane Paloma leveled hundreds of homes along Cuba’s southern coast before rapidly losing power over land Sunday, weakening from a dangerous Category 4 storm to a tropical depression in less than a day.

Crashing surf and a powerful sea surge sent waves almost a mile inland as the storm ravaged Santa Cruz del Sur, the coastal community where it roared ashore Saturday night.

Javier Ramos said he rebuilt his simple wood-frame house in Santa Cruz del Sur after Hurricane Ike struck in early September, only to watch Paloma flatten it again.

“At least we’re alive, but my wife hasn’t seen this yet,” Ramos told The Associated Press as he scavenged bits of clothing and smashed dishes in his front yard. “I don’t know how she’s going to react. It’s going to be terrible.”

Authorities said the late-season storm toppled a major communications tower, interrupted electricity and phone service, but no storm-related deaths were reported.

Cuba had feared that Paloma could cripple its recovery from Gustav and Ike, hurricanes that struck this summer, causing about $9.4 billion in damage and destroying nearly a third of the island’s crops. But an official with Cuba’s national power company said damage to the power grid was far less than that caused by the previous two hurricanes.

Paloma was a Category 4 hurricane when it hit Santa Cruz del Sur, but quickly lost strength. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami reported that by Sunday morning, the Cuban and Bahamian governments had discontinued all warnings associated with it.

By nightfall, Paloma’s center was 15 miles south-southwest of the colonial city of Camaguey.

Once as strong as 145 mph, the storm’s winds had weakened to 35 mph. Paloma was drifting toward the north at about 1 mph. The hurricane center’s forecast said the storm or its remnants should be near the north coast of Cuba today.

That was a far cry from the hurricane that brought waves of more than 10 feet high, which washed away nearly all traces of about 50 modest houses along the coast of Santa Cruz del Sur.