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US coast braces for Tropical Storm Hanna

A 10.7m-long fishing boat rests on the center of Highway 90 near Fort Pike, Louisiana, on Thursday. The boat was washed up to the highway from a boat yard when Hurricane Gustav hit the area.  PHOTO: AP

Tropical Storm Hanna closed in on the southeastern US coast yesterday after leaving 136 dead in Haiti as a powerful hurricane swept across the Atlantic, posing a potential threat to Caribbean islands and the US.

Hanna pushed through the Bahamas on its way to the US Atlantic coast, prompting emergency preparations before its expected arrival late yesterday after causing flooding and landslides in Haiti that left thousands homeless.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that Hanna could strengthen and gain hurricane status yesterday before reaching the US near North or South Carolina at the weekend.

Hanna “has been an erratic storm. It’s already done a lot of flooding [and] we are expecting it to strengthen slightly” before yesterday, NHC forecaster John Cangialosi said.

Heavy rain, wind and high surf were forecast along the southeastern coastline ahead of the storm’s arrival as governors in North Carolina and Virginia declared states of emergency, while South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford called for voluntary evacuations in two counties threatened by the storm.

At 0600 GMT yesterday, the center of the storm was 90km north of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas and about 790km south of Wilmington, North Carolina, the center said.

The storm was moving toward the northwest at about 30kph and was expected to pick up speed as it clears the Bahamas and heads northwest to the US coast.

“The center of Hanna will be near the southeast coast of the United States later today,” it said.

Hanna packed sustained winds of near 100kph, with higher gusts, according to reports from a reconnaissance aircraft.

A hurricane watch remained in effect for parts of the North and South Carolina coast as authorities prepared for possible flooding and kept a wary eye on a more formidable storm out in the Atlantic.

While Hurricane Ike was downgraded to a category three storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, it remained a threat to the US as it moved over the western Atlantic, the center said.

With maximum sustained winds of near 215kph, it was “still forecast to be a major hurricane in a couple of days,” it said.

A third system, Tropical Storm Josephine, was reported in the eastern Atlantic some 1,010km west of the southernmost islands of Cape Verde, moving in a west-northwest direction at about 17kph.

The storm, which disrupted shipping in the area but was not close to land, had maximum sustained winds of 75kph, with higher gusts.

The storms follow Hurricane Gustav, which ripped through the Caribbean then slammed the US Gulf Coast, and Tropical Storm Fay, which also pounded several Caribbean islands and made landfall in Florida four times, dumping record amounts of rain.

Haiti’s third-largest city, Gonaives, remained under water in the wake of Hanna on Thursday.

Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of Haiti’s civil protection office, said that flooding and landslides triggered by the heavy rain forced nearly 10,000 people into shelters — not including thousands more who had evacuated Gonaives, a city of 300,000.

Haitian Senator Yuri Latortue, who represents the city, called the situation “catastrophic,” saying some 200,000 people there had not eaten for three days.

Hanna struck Haiti one week after it was hit by Hurricane Gustav, which killed 77 people.
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