Hurricane Irene washed away homes in the Bahamas on Thursday as its battering winds and rain headed toward the US eastern seaboard including densely populated New York and New England. US emergency officials have urged residents from the Carolinas north to New England to watch for Irene, now a major Category 3 storm, which is forecast to rake up the coast starting Saturday.
The northern part of the North Carolina coast went on a hurricane watch in anticipation of Irene's forecast landfall on Saturday evening in the state's eastern Outer Banks barrier islands, which are popular with vacationers in the summer. The US Navy said ships of the Second Fleet based in Hampton Roads, Virginia, were under orders to put out to sea as a precaution to ride out the upcoming storm. Officers said large ships could better weather big storms at sea than in port.
North Carolina authorities have already started evacuations from exposed barrier islands, while along the East Coast residents rushed to stock up on food and water supplies, boarded up windows and secured roofs, vehicles and boats. Irene, which has already caused the deaths this week of at least one person in Puerto Rico and two in the Dominican Republic, with others reported missing, was lashing the Bahamas capital Nassau with heavy rains and gusting winds on Thursday. On Wednesday, it tore through sparsely populated low-lying south-eastern islands in the Atlantic archipelago.
The Bahamas newspaper The Tribune reported on its website that on Acklins Island "homes have been completely washed away or have lost entire roofs, power lines have been downed and trees are blocking roads." Many residents sought safety in shelters. No report on casualties was immediately available.
At 8 am (noon GMT), Irene was packing winds of 115 miles per hour (185 km per hour) and was located about 65 miles (105 km) east north-east of Nassau. Many tourists in the Bahamas had already fled the storm and major cruise lines cancelled stops there. The first hurricane of the storm-filled 2011 Atlantic season was expected to gain strength after it leaves the Bahamas on Thursday and race across open waters to clip North Carolina's jutting Outer Banks region on Saturday.
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