Hurricane
Dorian strengthens to 'catastrophic' category 5 storm
Bahamas
residents board up buildings and take to shelters
US coastal
states seem set for high winds and flooding
Richard
Luscombe in Miami
Sun 1 Sep
2019 15.54 BST First published on Sun 1 Sep 2019 12.13 BST
Hurricane
Dorian beefed up into a “catastrophic” category 5 storm on Sunday, as it began
pounding the northernmost islands of the Bahamas. In the US, new uncertainty
over its path reignited fears of a landfall on the American mainland.
Officials
warned of likely devastation in the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama from 175mph
sustained winds and storm surge of up to 20ft. In a special mid-morning
bulletin, the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) reported wind gusts above 200mph
and warned that “extreme winds and storm surge will continue for several
hours”.
In the
Bahamas, government officials urged residents to take immediate steps to
protect life and property.
“Once the
winds get to a certain strength we’re not going to to be able to respond,” Don
Cornish, head of the national emergency management agency, warned in a
pre-storm briefing. “We may not have the resources to come after persons who
are in harm’s way.”
Reporters
in the Bahamas said hundreds of residents of lower-lying islands, including
Grand Cay and Sweeting Cay, had ignored mandatory evacuation orders.
“It is
unfortunate that a lot of persons on these Cays did not heed these warnings for
whatever reason and a lot of them are left,” Theo Sealy of Bahamas TV network
Eyewitness News told CNN.
Hurricane
hunter crews from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)
flying into the storm’s eyewall early on Sunday recorded winds gusting at more
than 200mph, while an expected slowing in Dorian’s forward progress raised the
prospect of the system effectively stalling over the Bahamas for up to 48 hours
and dumping up to 30in of rain in some areas.
At 8am,
Dorian was 35 miles east of Abaco Island and moving west at 8mph, its predicted
path taking it close to Florida’s east coast on Monday before turning north and
skirting the US coast towards Georgia and the Carolinas.
On such a
track the storm was still likely to avoid landfall on the US mainland. But a
significant change to the forecast by NHC experts on Sunday morning brought the
cyclone much closer to Florida’s south-eastern coast by Monday and Tuesday,
prompting new tropical storm watches and warnings from just north of Miami to
Sebastian inlet, 100 miles north of West Palm Beach.
In Florida,
some observers likened life at the mercy of the slow but unpredictable storm to
being stalked by a turtle.
“A Florida landfall is still a distinct
possibility,” Richard Pasch, senior hurricane adviser at the NHC, wrote in a
morning advisory that upgraded Dorian’s strength to a category 5 storm with
sustained winds above 156mph.
“Since
Dorian is forecast to slow down and turn northward as it approaches the coast,
life-threatening storm surge and and dangerous hurricane-force winds are still
possible along portions of the Florida east coast by the middle part of this
week.
“There is
an increasing risk of string winds and dangerous storm surge along the coasts
of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina later this week.”
Palm Beach
officials announced evacuation orders for coastal areas and mobile homes on
Sunday morning and said shelters were being opened because of the risk of a
closer brush with Dorian than had been predicted 24 hours before. Counties
further north, including Martin and Brevard, began evacuations on Saturday.
The
increasing strength of the storm makes it the fourth consecutive year that at
least one Atlantic cyclone has reached category 5 status, according to the NHC.
Hurricane Matthew in 2016 followed a similar offshore track to Dorian’s
expected path yet still caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and 47
deaths in the US from wind, storm surge and significant inland flooding.
In 2017
Irma and Maria tore through the Caribbean, the latter blamed for more than
3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico, and last year Hurricane Michael wrecked areas of
the Florida Panhandle that are still struggling to recover.
Donald
Trump began Sunday at Camp David in Maryland. The White House said briefings
continued while the president was at his golf club in Virginia on Saturday.
Trump was
due to return to Washington. Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland
security, told ABC’s This Week the president would find “really a whole of
government effort, and the president is going to make sure that we’re on the
same page, that we’re tracking this, and that we’re going to be ready”.
The
administration recently ordered a transfer of funds from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (Fema), which has been criticised for its reaction to recent
hurricanes, particularly in Puerto Rico, to Immigrations and Customs
Enforcement (Ice). In a letter to Congress about the move, McAleenan wrote that
“absent significant new catastrophic events”, Fema “would still have enough
money to operate”.
Asked on
Sunday if Dorian was a potential “catastrophic event”, he said: “It is.”
He also
said no funds had yet been transferred and insisted that “any potential
transfers will not impact our ability to respond to this storm or any other
storms in the rest of the hurricane season”.
The
Associated Press contributed to this report
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