Five dead in Bahamas from Dorian as storm threatens US coast
Officials warn storm is still 'extremely dangerous' as it approaches US mainland
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Your support makes all the difference.Five people have been killed by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, the nation's prime minister has revealed, as Donald Trump spent part of the day playing golf.
As the category 4 storm pummelled the Bahamas with 145mph winds, triggering huge damage and massive flooding, the nation’s prime minister said at least five people had been killed.
“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy,” Hubert Minnis told reporters, saying the deaths had occurred on the Abaco Islands, which were where Dorian first made landfall on Sunday.
He said people on nearby Great Bahama island who are in serious distress and that rescue crews would respond once weather conditions permitted them to do so.
“This is the time for us as Bahamians to show our love, our care and our compassion,“ Mr Minnis said at a press conference on Tuesday evening. “Your compassion at this most difficult hour will bring healing and hope to those who are traumatised by this destructive hurricane.”
As officials in the Bahamas urged residents to find flotation devices and use hammers to break out of their attics if they were threatened by the massive flooding, Mr Trump spent part of the day at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. Reports said it was 289th day he has spent at a Trump property and the 227th, he has enjoyed at one of his golf clubs since becoming president.
Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina have all declared states of emergency as Hurricane Dorian approaches the US mainland.
South Carolina's governor Henry McMaster has ordered a mandatory evacuation of the entire coast of the state amid Dorian's threat.
The order, which covers about 830,000 people
Over the weekend, Mr Trump cancelled a trip to Poland to monitor the federal response to the storm, which he has warned could be “one of the largest hurricanes ever”.
If you would like to see how the day's drama played out please read below
Latest from the AP: Officials said they received a "tremendous" number of calls from people in flooded homes. A radio station received more than 2,000 distress messages, including reports of a five-month-old baby stranded on a roof and a grandmother with six grandchildren who cut a hole in a roof to escape rising floodwaters
Not entirely related to Dorian, but this is an update about protesters outside the hotel where the president has been playing golf:
At 1.46pm two protesters (a man and a woman) walked past the entrance to the Trump National Golf Club and stopped on the nearby sidewalk, which runs along a grass verge. From a distance they appear to have set up a cardboard cutout and some signs with pictures beneath a tree. The words “rat infested...” were visible on one sign.
A view of the hurricane from above, tweeted by NASA astronaut Nick Hague, a current resident of the International Space Station:
As many as 13,000 homes in the Bahamas may now have been destroyed, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Reuters reports that houses in a neighborhood in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island were engulfed by six feet of water. Rosa Knowles-Bain, 61, who fled to an emergency shelter two days ago, told the news agency: "It looks like they're boats on top of the water."
And some more views of Dorian from space, this time from Christina Koch, another of the astronauts currently on the International Space Station:
Donald Trump has arrived back at the White House after another day playing golf. He is being updated on the threat of Hurricane Dorian on an hourly basis, his spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said. White House staff are said to be reviewing hurricane planning with state and local officials.
The president has been retweeting messages from the National Hurricane Centre, as well as retweeting news about the California boat fire tragedy, in between a flurry of messages attacking the media and boasting about his stewardship of the economy.
Underlining the potentially lethal dangers facing the southeast US seaboard - and which are already being experienced in the Bahamas - the Florida National Guard has put its search and rescue teams on standby.
Hurricane Dorian's winds have reduced slightly, according to the National Hurricane Centre.
Maximum sustained winds fell to 145 mph — down from 155 mph earlier in the day. However, the slow-moving storm is continuing to batter the islands.
It is centred about 25 miles northeast of Freeport, Grand Bahama, and about 105 miles east of Florida's West Palm Beach. The storm is expected to head towards Florida between Monday night and Wednesday evening with current plotting suggesting it will then move northwards along the coastlines of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
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