Hurricane Dorian: Several killed in Bahamas as storm continues to hammer region
Hurricane Dorian has killed at least five people in the Bahamas, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said at a press conference on Monday evening.
“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy,” he said.
Dorian has been downgraded to a still-dangerous Category 4 but continues to wreak havoc on the archipelago, dumping rain and flooding homes and prompting desperate calls for help from people stranded by the storm.
The slow-moving hurricane, which has been hovering over Grand Bahama Island for more than 36 hours, is expected to stay put until at least Tuesday morning local time, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
Around 13,000 homes in the Bahamas have been destroyed or severely damaged by the storm, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
Inching toward Florida
The deaths were confirmed in the Abaco Islands, which bore the full brunt of Dorian as it made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane on Sunday, the most dangerous on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
The storm brought maximum sustained winds of 165 miles per hour (297 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 220 mph — making it one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to make landfall.
The storm is expected to slowly move “dangerously close” to the US state of Florida late on Tuesday through Wednesday evening, the NHC said. The storm is then projected to move toward the coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina on Wednesday and Thursday.
The governors of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina have ordered mandatory evacuations of their states’ coastal areas as of noon Monday. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp told reporters Monday in Savannah: “This is not one to play with.”
rs/cmk (AP, AFP)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/hurricane-dorian-several-killed-in-bahamas-as-storm-continues-to-hammer-region/a-50265319?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf