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Dorian anchored over Bahamas
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Practically parking itself over the Bahamas for a day and a half, Hurricane Dorian pounded away at the islands yesterday in a catastrophic onslaught that sent floodwaters up to the second floors of buildings, trapped people in attics and chased others from one shelter to another. At least five deaths were reported.
“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy,” Bahamas’s Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said. “The devastation is unprecedented and extensive.“
The storm’s relentless winds and rain battered homes and businesses on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, which have a combined population of about 70,000 and is no more than 12 meters above sea level at their highest points. The Grand Bahama airport was under two meters of water.
Desperate callers trying to find loved ones left messages with local radio stations as the country’s health minister said medical teams would be sent to the Abaco islands by the afternoon.
As of daybreak, Dorian’s winds had dipped to 193 kilometers per hour, making it a still highly dangerous Category 3 hurricane and the storm was barely moving at 2kph, with part of its eyewall hanging over Grand Bahama Island since Sunday night.
The storm was centered 70 kilometers northeast of Freeport and 175km northeast of West Palm Beach, Florida. Hurricane-force winds extended out as far as 75km in some directions.
Dorian is expected to approach the Florida coast later today but the threat to the state eased significantly, with the National Hurricane Center’s projected track showing most of the coast just outside the cone of potential landfall. No place in Florida had more than an 8 percent chance of getting hit by hurricane-force winds.
As Labor Day weekend drew to a close, hundreds of thousands of people in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina — more than 800,000 in South Carolina alone and a half-million in Georgia — were warned to evacuate for fear Dorian could bring life-threatening storm-surge flooding even if the hurricane’s center stayed offshore, as forecast. Several large airports announced closings and hundreds of flights were canceled.
The US Coast Guard airlifted at least 21 people injured on Abaco Island, which Dorian hit on Sunday with sustained winds of 295kph and gusts up to 355kph, a strength matched only by the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, before storms were given names.
Scientists say climate change generally has been fueling more powerful and wetter storms, and the only recorded hurricane more powerful than Dorian was Allen in 1980, with 305kph winds, though it did not hit land at that strength.
Bahamian officials said they received a “tremendous“ number of calls from people in flooded homes. One radio station said it got more than 2,000 distress messages, including reports of a 5-month-old baby stranded on a roof and a woman with six grandchildren who cut a hole in a roof to escape rising floodwaters. At least two designated storm shelters flooded.
Dorian was blamed for one death in Puerto Rico at the start of its path through the Caribbean.
Minnis said many homes and buildings were severely damaged or destroyed. Choppy brown floodwaters reached roofs and the tops of palm trees.
Parliament member Iram Lewis said he feared waters would keep rising and stranded people would lose contact with officials as their cellphone batteries died. “It is scary,“ he said. “We’re definitely in dire straits.“
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