Storm brings floodwaters
and high winds to US eastern coastline after reducing parts of the Bahamas to
rubble.
Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the
Outer Banks of North Carolina on Friday, hitting the beach resort area with
powerful winds and battering waves days after reducing parts of the Bahamas to
rubble and killing dozens on the island nation.
The storm, packing 150km/h (90mph) made
landfall at Cape Hatteras at about 9am local time (13:00 GMT), according to the
National Hurricane Center.
It lashed the Outer Banks with
hurricane-force winds as far as 72 kilometers (45 miles) from the centre of the
hurricane and sent tropical storm winds farther than 320km from its centre, the
NHC said.
"It's bad," Ann Warner, who
owns Howard's Pub on Ocracoke Island, told the Associated Press by telephone.
"The water came up to the inside of our bottom floor, which has never had
water."
She said a skylight blew out and
whitecaps coursed through her front yard and underneath her elevated house.
"We're safe," Warner added.
"But it's certainly a mess."
Another Ocracoke Island resident,
bookshop owner Leslie Lanier, texted: "We are flooding like crazy. It is
in the houses, and there will be more before it stops."
"Lots of people are getting water
starting in their homes," Lanier added. "I have been here 32 years
and not seen this."
It has already dumped up to 25cm (10
inches) of rain along the coast between Charleston, South Carolina, to
Wilmington, North Carolina, about 275km away, forecasters said.
"The rain is moving up
north," said National Weather Service forecaster Alex Lamers early on
Friday. "Even the Raleigh-Durham area inland will get 3 inches (7.5cm)
today."
Dorian is expected to push out to sea
later on Friday and bring tropical storm winds to Nantucket Island and Martha's
Vineyard, Massachusetts, early on Saturday.
But it will likely spare much of the
rest of the East Coast the worst of its rain and wind, before likely making
landfall in Canada's Nova Scotia that night, the NHC said.
"It's in the process of moving
out, going north," Lamers said.
Floodwaters,
power outages
The howling west flank of Dorian has
soaked the Carolinas since early on Thursday, flooding coastal towns, whipping
up more than a dozen tornadoes and cutting power to hundreds of thousands of
people.
Floodwaters rose to 30cm (a foot) or
more in parts of the historic South Carolina port city of Charleston, where
more than 18cm (seven inches) of rain fell in some areas, officials
said.
More than 330,000 homes and businesses
were without power in North Carolina and South Carolina on Friday morning.
Power had mostly been restored to thousands of people in Georgia, tracking site
power outage. us showed.
But as Dorian is expected to pick up
speed from its 22 km/h (14mph) crawl on Friday, life-threatening storm surges
and dangerous winds remain a threat for much of the area and Virginia, the
National Hurricane Center said.
Governors in the region declared states
of emergency, shut schools, opened shelters, readied National Guard troops and
urged residents to heed warnings, as news media circulated fresh images of the
storm's devastation in the Bahamas.
In North and South Carolina alone, more
than 900,000 people had been ordered to evacuate their homes. It was unclear
how many complied.
In Kill Devil Hills in the Outer Banks,
Mark Jennings decided to ignore the order, lining his garage door with sandbags
and boarding up his home with plywood.
The retired firefighter planned to stay
put with his wife and two dogs, saying: "We are ready to go. If something
happens, we can still get out of here."
Dorian whipped up at least three
tornadoes in the region, officials said. One in North Carolina damaged scores
of trailers at a campground in Emerald Isle, but no one was injured, the News
& Observer said.
Of at least four storm-related deaths
reported in the United States, three were in Orange County, Florida, during
storm preparations or evacuation, the mayor's office said.
In North Carolina, an 85-year-old man
fell off a ladder while barricading his home for Dorian, the governor said.
70,000
in need of relief in the Bahamas
At least 70,000
Bahamians needed immediate humanitarian relief after Dorian became the
most damaging storm ever to hit the island nation. The hurricane killed at
least 30 people, but officials said the death toll was expected to
increase.
On one of the hardest-hit islands -
Abaco - small planes picked up the most vulnerable survivors on Thursday.
The evacuation was slow, however, and
there was frustration for some who said they had nowhere to go after the
Category 5 hurricane splintered whole neighborhoods.
"They told us that the babies, the
pregnant people and the elderly people were supposed to be first
preference," said Lukya Thompson, a 23-year-old bartender. But many were
still waiting, she told the Associated Press.
Relief organizations began dropping off
supplies, including food, water and generators.
