Hurricane Ike lashed the Turks and Caicos Islands early yesterday and threatened to unleash its fury on the Bahamas, Cuba and the US Gulf Coast, as Tropical Storm Hanna continued to batter the US East Coast. Ike’s Category 4 fury started pounding the low-lying Turks and Caicos Islands near the southern Bahamas late on Saturday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in an advisory.
It was expected to careen past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and toward Louisiana and its storm-battered city of New Orleans as early as tomorrow.
Calling it “extremely dangerous,” the center said the storm was moving southwest over the Turks and Caicos at 24kph.
An immediate concern was its effect on Haiti, where a humanitarian crisis was unfolding after flooding from Hanna left more than 500 people dead and thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.
With winds near 215kph, Ike was to churn just north of Haiti on its way to Cuba, but further flooding in Haiti is expected as the storm’s outer rain bands were forecast to unleash torrential downpours on the country’s vulnerable northwest coast.
“These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides over mountainous terrain,” the center warned, predicting “some strengthening” of the storm.
It was an ominous forecast for the poorest country in the Americas, already reeling from the destruction inflicted by three storms in as many weeks, and where the UN has warned the death toll from Hanna’s floods was “increasing hourly.”
Some 650,000 people have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, UNICEF said.
After Haiti, Ike was on course to plow into northeastern Cuba late yesterday or today, another mountainous island nation recently battered by this season’s devastating string of storms.
The island state — where Hurricane Gustav damaged or destroyed 140,000 homes in the west a week ago — was on high alert.
“Almost our entire country is in the danger zone,” Jose Rubiera, the head of Cuba’s Insmet forecast agency, told Cuban television.
Meanwhile Tropical Storm Hanna raced across the US eastern seaboard on Saturday, battering 1,600km of coastline with powerful waves and heavy downpours.
Hanna crashed into the border of North Carolina and South Carolina before dawn on Saturday packing winds of 110kph before weakening as it moved up quickly along the coast.
The storm churned over Virginia, but then gained strength slightly as Hanna streaked up the coast toward New England, the NHC said.
Early yesterday, Hanna was approaching New York, where the men’s and women’s finals at the US Open tennis championships were postponed by a day because of the storm.
The storm dumped up to 200mm of rain on Washington, according to the National Weather Service, and 100mm to 150mm across much of the east coast from North Carolina to New York.
Hanna could also produce dangerous waves with a storm surge of up to 1m above normal tide levels, the hurricane center said.
The storm was due to reach Canada’s eastern province of Nova Scotia by midday yesterday.
Several southern US states have endured a battery of storms in recent weeks, including Tropical Storm Fay late last month and Hurricane Gustav this past week.
As Hanna pounded the US coast, Florida officials were closely monitoring the more formidable Hurricane Ike, with Florida Governor Charlie Christ warning that Ike could strike southern Florida by tomorrow.
“Ike has grown rapidly into a dangerous, powerful storm,” Christ told a news conference.
Densely populated south Florida, including the cities of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, has not been hit by a major hurricane since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 — the costliest natural disaster in US history until it was topped by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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