This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
As Dorian Lashes the Carolinas, the Bahamas Grapple With ‘Unimaginable’ Losses
Hurricane Dorian lashed the Carolinas with wind, flooding and tornadoes Thursday, as the storm's death toll in the Bahamas rose to 30, The Washington Post reported.
The storm, downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane Friday morning, was located 25 miles east of Cape Lookout, North Carolina at 5 a.m., according to the National Hurricane Center. Its eye could touch the Outer Banks of North Carolina Friday morning. But while Dorian knocked out power for nearly 200,000 people in South Carolina, as well as 9,000 in North Carolina and 7,000 in Georgia, as The New York Times reported, overall its impacts on the Eastern U.S. have not been as devastating as feared.
"This is not going to be one of those storms that goes down in our history or in our record books," Thomas Bell, the spokesman for the emergency management agency in Horry County, South Carolina, told The Washington Post. "This was not a disaster or a catastrophe — especially compared to some of the storms we've seen recently, like Florence last year."
The same could not be said for the Bahamas, where officials and residents are still taking stock of the devastation. Officials ordered more body bags, morticians and coolers to the impacted islands as hundreds to thousands of people remain missing.
"The public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering," Health Minister Dr. Duane Sands said, as CNN reported.
The hurricane may have damaged or destroyed 45 percent of homes on Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands, BBC News reported. Thirty-five inches of rain caused widespread flooding, and Grand Bahama's only international airport was severely damaged.
Great Abaco is "virtually uninhabitable," BBC News said. There is no water, power or food on the island. Over all, the UN estimates that around 70,000 people in the Bahamas will need some form of disaster aid, The Guardian reported.
"I have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Only the clothes that I have on my body right now," Great Abaco resident Kathlyn Russell, who was evacuated to Nassau Wednesday, told The Guardian.
Dorian's passage up the Carolina Coast was far less damaging, but still dramatic. Two tornadoes touched down in North Myrtle Beach and Little River, South Carolina and several in North Carolina, The New York Times reported. One, in Carolina Shores, North Carolina, caused property damage, but no injuries.
The storm also flooded streets in Charleston, South Carolina and Wilmington, North Carolina. Wilmington International Airport recorded 8.93 inches of rain Thursday. Messages on an electronic street sign in one Wilmington neighborhood alternated between "Be safe!" and "Not even your mom loves you, Dorian!"
Dorian hit the Bahamas as a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest storm to ever impact the island chain. Hurricanes are becoming more extreme and destructive because of the climate crisis. BBC Weather's Tomasz Schafernaker explained. Schafernaker gave two reasons:
An increase in sea surface temperatures strengthens the wind speeds within storms and also raises the amount of precipitation a hurricane will dump
Sea levels are expected to increase by one to four feet over the next century, bringing the potential of far worse damage from sea surges and coastal flooding during storms
- Florida Prepares for 'Extremely Dangerous' Dorian to Make Landfall ... ›
- 5 Dead as Hurricane Dorian Pummels Bahamas - EcoWatch ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Richard Hamilton Smith / Corbis NX / Getty Images
By Susan Cosier
Come February in Wisconsin, almost everything will be covered in ice and snow. In little shanties on frozen Lake Winnebago, a 30-by-13-mile lake in the eastern part of the state, fishers will keep watch over rectangular holes cut into the ice with a chainsaw. When they spot a fin passing below, they'll jab their spears down deep. The lucky ones will earn themselves a lake sturgeon, a species that has prowled the earth's waters for more than 150 million years.
Grecia Elenes grew up in Fresno, California. She says some parts of the city have been neglected for decades. When she moved back after college she realized nothing has changed.
Three U.S. firefighters gave their lives battling Australia's historic wildfires Thursday when their airborne water tanker crashed.
Doomsday Clock Moves to 100 Seconds Before Midnight Due to Threats of Nuclear War and Climate Change
Trending
In a new report about how the world's coral reefs face "the combined threats of climate change, pollution, and overfishing" — endangering the future of marine biodiversity — a London-based nonprofit calls for greater global efforts to end the climate crisis and ensure the survival of these vital underwater ecosystems.