The slow-moving Hurricane Dorian, one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, pounded Grand Bahama Island on Tuesday and was forecast to come “dangerously close” to Florida’s coast by the day’s end.
Dorian has been pounding the Bahamas for days, killing at least five people in the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas and inundating homes with floodwater ahead of its expected advance on the U.S. coast, where more than a million people have been ordered evacuated.
But the hurricane weakened to a Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale early on Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour (195 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was moving northwest at 1 mile per hour (1.6 kph), well below walking speed.
The exact toll of the devastation in the Bahamas will not be clear until the storm passes and rescue crews can get on the ground.
“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of our northern Bahamas,” Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis told a news conference on Monday. “Our mission and focus now is search, rescue and recovery.”
He added that the U.S. Coast Guard was on the ground in Abaco and had rescued a number of injured individuals. Critically injured people were being taken to hospitals on New Providence, the country’s most populous island.
As many as 13,000 homes in the Bahamas may have been destroyed or severely damaged, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
Houses in a neighborhood in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island were engulfed by 6 feet (1.8 m) of water. “It looks like they’re boats on top of the water,” said Rosa Knowles-Bain, 61, a resident who fled two days ago to an emergency shelter.
Dorian was expected to churn towards Florida by the day’s end, before bringing its powerful winds and dangerous surf along the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina by late Thursday.
Forecasters have told Floridians not to become complacent, as the storm is now predicted to stay off the coast.
“It’s not that far off shore,” said Robbie Berg, a forecaster and hurricane specialist with the NHC.
“All it has to do is jog a little bit west and you have a full-on hurricane rolling through Florida,” he said. “No one is out of the woods.”
