Hurricane Dorian began inching northwestward over the Bahamas Tuesday morning after hovering there for hours, and forecasters say the now-Category 3 storm will later move “dangerously close” to Florida’s east coast.
The monstrous storm has been blamed for the deaths of at least five people on the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas, where it touched down Sunday afternoon as a Category 5, the strongest Atlantic hurricane landfall on record. Dorian then came to a grinding halt on Monday morning and remained at a virtual standstill over Grand Bahama, the northernmost island of the Bahamas archipelago.
An official with the U.S. Department of State told ABC News on Tuesday morning that Bahamas Foreign Minister Darren Henfield reports “nearly everything is gone” in Marsh Harbour, a town in the Abaco Islands, and the Leonard M. Thompson International Airport there is completely submerged.
Meanwhile, there’s reports of heavy flooding in Freeport, the main city on Grand Bahama, where Grand Bahama International Airport is inundated with water as is the city’s one-story hospital, and the main highway has turned into a river, leaving some people trapped, according to the U.S. State Department official.
