Dorian heads for Florida, Georgia
MARSH HARBOUR: The wreckage of pulverised homes, beached boats and floodwaters covered kilometres of the Bahamas in Hurricane Dorian’s wake on Wednesday, as rescuers searched for survivors of the worst storm to ever strike the island nation.
The scope of the damage and humanitarian crisis was still unfolding as aerial video of the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas showed wide swaths of destruction and officials warned the current death toll of seven was likely to rise.
Aid agencies estimated that tens of thousands of people would need food and other support.
“We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,” Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis told a news conference. “No effort or resources will be held back.”
Some storm victims remained on rootops, awaiting rescue, according to media reports early on Wednesday.
“We can expect more deaths to be recorded. This is just preliminary information,” Minnis said.
“Marsh Harbor has suffered, I would estimate, in excess of 60 percent damage to their homes,” Minnis said, referring to the port on Great Abaco.
“The Mud, as we know, has been completely destroyed or decimated,” he said referring to a shantytown known as the Mud and the Peas.
Aerial video of the Bahamas’ Great Abaco Island showed miles of flooded neighbourhoods, litered with upturned boats, and shipping containers scatered like toys. Many buildings had walls or roofs partly ripped off.
“Victims are being loaded on flatbed trucks across Abaco,” one Twiter user with the handle @ mvp242 said, describing a rain-blurred photograph of limp bodies strewn across a truck bed.
Other posts on Twiter said entire communities were swept away.
Ater rampaging through the Caribbean as one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded, Dorian wind speeds dropped on Tuesday to make it a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-simpson intensity scale. It maintained that level on Wednesday, but forecasters warned it was still dangerous.
Residents of coastal Florida, Georgia and South Carolina were bracing for Dorian’s approach on Wednesday, with the National Hurricane Center warning the slow-moving storm could make landfall in South or North Carolina Thursday or Friday.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp extended a state of emergency to cover 21 counties as the storm tracked north towards its coast.