Hurricane Gonzalo gathered strength moving over open water away from the eastern end of the Caribbean on Tuesday and forecasters said it could become a powerful category 4 storm yesterday as it headed toward Bermuda.
Authorities on some of the smaller islands buffeted by Gonzalo said at least one person was dead and two were missing.
Dozens of boats were damaged and power was knocked out in the Dutch Caribbean territory of St Maarten.
Photo: AFP
The storm had top sustained winds of 205kph and was centered about 1,100km south of Bermuda late on Tuesday, the US National Hurricane Center said. It was moving northwest at 20kph.
The center said Gonzalo could become a category 4 hurricane while it takes a path that would take it near Bermuda tomorrow.
Category 4 storms have sustained winds of at least 209kph with the potential to cause catastrophic damage.
“Folks in Bermuda are going to need to start paying attention to this thing,” National Hurricane Center meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said by phone.
Bermuda’s government posted a hurricane watch for the British territory, urging islanders to keep an eye on the storm’s progress.
Officials said flights departing Bermuda today, tomorrow and Saturday were fully booked. Gonzalo was blamed for the death of an unidentified elderly man who was aboard a boat in St Maarten’s Simpson Bay Lagoon, which looked like a ship graveyard on Tuesday with several masts protruding from the water.
Acting Coast Guard director Wendell Thode said 22 of the 37 boats destroyed by the storm were in the lagoon.
“Most of the boats that are destroyed are completely under water,” he said.
Authorities were searching for a man last seen on a dinghy near the French Caribbean territory of St Martin and another man last seen standing close to a harbor in St Barts, said Matthieu Doligez, general secretary of the prefecture in St Martin.
St Maarten Zoological and Botanical Foundation vice president Amy Arrindell said the St Maarten Zoo was heavily damaged, but no animals escaped or died.
She said trees were uprooted, the petting zoo was destroyed and the animals’ enclosures were flooded.
“There is major damage to the structure,” she said. “It is total devastation.”
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