HURRICANE Dorian roared yesterday towards the Bahamas as the island chain braced for a devastating direct hit, before the monster storm churns up the US coast from Florida towards the Carolinas.

Barrelling in from the Atlantic Ocean, the extremely dangerous Category 4 storm is set to hit parts of the northwestern Bahamas hard today, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said in its latest bulletin at 2100 GMT.

Further ahead the NHC said Dorian would “remain a dangerous hurricane through five days”, but exactly where – and how hard – it will strike the US coast looked increasingly uncertain after the storm shifted course overnight, apparently sparing Florida the worst.

In Grand Bahama, businesses were boarded up and thousands of people have evacuated the predicted storm path with forecasts of devastating winds, life-threatening surf conditions, and storm surges of up to 4.5m.

Yasmin Rigby, a resident of the island’s main city Freeport, told AFP “people are moving out of the east and west ends, fearing the worst”. 

Shelves in grocery stores were “just about cleared”, Rigby said, and most homes and businesses had been shuttered since Friday. 

She said memories of past hurricanes were still fresh, including Wilma in 2005 – a storm of historic dimensions. “It took weeks for water, food and electricity to be back to normal.”

The storm’s leisurely pace of 13kph means it could deposit as much as 130cm of rain in the northwestern Bahamas. 

That, coupled with the storm surge predictions, poses a fearful prospect for many of the islands, some barely 30cm above sea level. – AFP, September 1, 2019.