Deadly Hanna rolls toward US

2008-09-05 14:07

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

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

Hanna could strengthen and gain hurricane status on Friday before reaching the United States near North or South Carolina at the weekend, the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said.

Hanna "has been an erratic storm. It's already done a lot of flooding (and) we are expecting it to strengthen slightly" before Friday, NHC forecaster John Cangialosi told AFP.

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 06:00 GMT on Friday, the centre of the storm was 90km north of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas and about 790km south of Wilmington, North Carolina, the NHC said.

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

Hanna was packing sustained winds of near 100km/h, with higher gusts, according to reports from a reconnaissance aircraft.

Hurricane watch

"The centre of Hanna will be near the southeast coast of the United States later today," the NHC said.

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.

Hurricane Ike remained "dangerous" but weakened slightly, downgraded to a Category 3 storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale as it moved over the western Atlantic with sustained winds of 205km/h. It had been classified as a Category 4 storm throughout Thursday.

At 09:00 GMT on Friday, the centre of Ike was about 760km/h north-northeast of the Leeward Islands and was moving west at 22km/h, according to the NHC, which advised authorities in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands to keep a close watch on the formidable storm.

Cangialosi described it as "absolutely a powerful hurricane", while adding that "there is no immediate threat" to land. He said it was too soon to tell if it would track north toward the US eastern coastline, or westward toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Ike was forecast to head north of Haiti, sparing the country more trauma as hundreds of thousands remained stranded without food or clean water as a result of Hanna, local authorities 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 around 17km/h.

The storm, which disrupted shipping in the area but was not close to land, had maximum sustained winds of 75km/h, 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.

- AFP