Hanna nears Carolinas before run up East Coast
Tropical Storm Hanna charged closer to the Carolinas early on Saturday, lashing the coast with heavy rains before striking land and running up the U.S. East Coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said.
Hanna, which had killed at least 529 people while sweeping over Haiti, was expected to be just short of Category 1 hurricane strength when it strikes North Carolina and South Carolina before dawn on Saturday, the hurricane Centre said.
Hurricane Ike, still an extremely dangerous Category 3 storm, churned in the open Atlantic toward south Florida and the oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico, the Centre said.
Authorities declared states of emergency, several North Carolina beach communities were under evacuation orders, campgrounds were shut and storm alerts were issued from Georgia to New Jersey, including for Washington, as the eighth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season threatened the East Coast with flash flooding.
By 2 a.m. (7:00 a.m. British time), Hanna was 60 miles (95 km) southwest of Wilmington, North Carolina. It was racing north at 21 mph (34 kph) with top winds of 70 mph (115 kph).
Ike was far more threatening than Hanna because its top sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) threatened the Gulf Coast's 4,000 offshore platforms that produce a quarter of U.S. crude oil and 15 percent of the energy-hungry country's natural gas.
Ike had weakened from a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale on Friday.
By 2 a.m. (7:00 a.m. British time), Ike was spinning 330 miles (530 km) east-northeast of Grand Turk Island and was expected to sweep westward near or over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southern Bahamas by Sunday.
The Bahamian government sent soldiers and emergency supplies to Mayaguana and San Salvador, southern islands left short of food and water by an overdue mail boat.
"If we have heavy flooding and lose power, we could be in an uncomfortable situation," said chief councillor Earnel Brown of the island of Mayaguana.
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