Hurricane hits US after battering Bahamas
200,000 are left without electricity in fierce storm
HURRICANE Dorian has raked the south-eastern US coast with howling, window-rattling winds and sideways rain, knocking out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses.
Dorian pushed northward towards North Carolina’s dangerously exposed Outer Banks.
Leaving at least 20 people dead in its wake in the devastated Bahamas, Dorian made its way up the Eastern Seaboard, sweeping past Florida on Wednesday at a relatively safe distance.
From there, the storm apparently grazed Georgia, then hugged the South Carolina coast with more serious effects.
It strengthened briefly to a Category 3 hurricane, then dropped back to a Category 2, with winds of 110mph, still a threat to hundreds of miles of coastline.
“Get to safety and stay there,” North Carolina governor Roy Cooper said.
“This won’t be a brush-by. Whether it comes ashore or not, the eye of the storm will be close enough to cause extensive damage in North Carolina.”
An estimated three million people in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas were warned to evacuate as the storm closed in with the potential for life-threatening storm surges.
Navy ships were ordered to
Damage caused on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas by Hurricane Dorian on September 1 and 2. At least 20 people are reported to have died in the storm’s wake
ride it out at sea and military aircraft were moved inland.
At least two deaths were reported on the US mainland, in Florida and North Carolina, both involving men who fell while getting ready for the storm.
The National Hurricane Centre’s projected track showed Dorian passing near or over the Outer Banks on Friday, lashing the thin line of islands that stick out from the US coast like a boxer’s chin.
Dorian was then expected to peel away from the shoreline.
In an assault that began over Labour Day weekend, Dorian pounded the Bahamas with Cat
egory 5 winds of up to 185mph, obliterating entire neighbourhoods and triggering a humanitarian crisis.
It weakened to a Category 2 before strengthening again late on Wednesday.
About 830,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders on the South Carolina coast alone.
More than 1,500 people sought refuge in 28 shelters in South Carolina, where rain began falling late on Wednesday in the historic port city of Charleston, situated on a peninsula that is prone to flooding even from ordinary storms.