The latest updates:
The storm is passing over the Outer Banks.
Hurricane Dorian, the storm that devastated the Bahamas and put much of the southeastern United States on edge, pounded the North Carolina coast with rain early Friday and whipped some parts of the state’s Outer Banks with hurricane-force winds.
The storm, which was downgraded to Category 1 early Friday, was centered about 30 miles west-southwest of Cape Hatteras, N.C., as of 7 a.m., according to the National Hurricane Center.
The eyewall, the band of clouds that surround the storm’s center, was moving over the Outer Banks, a 175-mile-long strip of narrow barrier islands that are accessible only by bridges, boats or planes.
The eye does not have to make landfall for the storm to cause serious damage. Forecasters said storm surge waters could flood up to seven feet above normal tide levels in some areas on Friday.
In Wilmington, N.C., the bands of rain that had pelted the city in sporadic bursts for much of Thursday turned into a sustained, breezy shower on Friday. Water overflowed ditches and filled some cul-de-sacs, and several traffic lights had lost power as of about 2 a.m., when winds reached 35 miles per hour and gusts blew up to 48 m.p.h.
But as Hurricane Dorian continued up the East Coast, it appeared that the Carolinas may be the latest region — after Puerto Rico, Florida and Georgia — to escape potential devastation.
To be sure, the city received a staggering amount of rain and was still being hit with more. The Wilmington International Airport recorded 8.93 inches of rain between 1:53 a.m. on Thursday and 1:53 a.m. on Friday, and more than 100,000 customers were without power on Friday morning.
But most of the city’s roads were passable, and no injuries had been reported on Thursday. The only obvious signs of wind damage were knocked over trash cans and at least one basketball hoop that was blown over.
At the North Chase apartments in Wilmington, a neighborhood whose properties were damaged in Hurricane Florence, water skimmed across several roads and many of the ditches were filled to the brim — or above — with water. A nearby electronic sign flashed intermittently between two messages: “Be safe!” and “Not even your mom loves you, Dorian!”
Next in Dorian’s sights: Tidewater Virginia, the Delmarva Peninsula and Southeast Massachusetts.
As Hurricane Dorian tracks ever faster northeastward, its powerful winds are gradually slowing and spreading out over a wider area. Though the center of the storm is unlikely to turn left toward land, much of southeastern Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula will be lashed on Friday with tropical-storm-force winds, and the same is expected to hit the southeastern corner of Massachusetts, including Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and parts of Cape Cod, by Saturday, forecasters said.
Tropical storm warnings have been posted from North Carolina all the way to Fenwick Island, Del., as well as for Chesapeake Bay south of Drum Point, Md., and the tidal portions of the Potomac River. In Massachusetts, the warnings are up for the southern coast, from Woods Hole to Sagamore Beach, and for the islands.
A North Carolina church is translating emergency updates into Spanish.
In a dimly lit church in Wilmington late on Thursday night, Fernando Lopez monitored Hurricane Dorian as coffee brewed and children played tic-tac-toe.
For several days this week, Mr. Lopez and other leaders of the First Brigade U.S. Christian Church had lived inside the church, watching updates from local governments, storm chasers and television stations and translating them into Spanish for the Hispanic ministry’s followers.
The church leaders have posted dozens of times each day on Facebook and fielded calls from nearby residents asking whether they should stay or leave. They also opened their doors to residents who fled their homes and were sleeping at the church on Thursday night.
The updates — which range from shelter locations to tornado warnings — could be vital for Spanish-speaking residents. Many of the notifications from the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County are only in English.
“It’s not a big city, but a lot of people don’t speak English,” Mr. Lopez said as children — including three of his — watched movies with their parents and giggled as they chased each other through the church.
For example, shortly after midnight, the church translated into Spanish a Facebook post from the county alerting residents that Duke Energy, an electric company, would not be responding to reports of downed power lines until the morning.
The ministry provided a similar service during Hurricane Florence, when it provided information in Spanish and opened its doors to mobile home and other residents who had evacuated.
Fewer people fled their homes this year than during Hurricane Florence, Mr. Lopez said, but people grew more and more worried as the day wore on and the rain continued to fall on the city.
On Thursday, a man called Mr. Lopez in the afternoon asking if he should evacuate or not. Wary of prescribing what callers should do, Mr. Lopez instead acted as a weatherman, explaining that dangerous winds could extend for 60 miles from the eye of the hurricane.
One of the pages most-watched updates — a Facebook live video — racked up more than 2,000 views.
Mr. Lopez, who is also a professional painter, said he planned to keep an eye on the storm. The children stomping through the house would help, he predicted.
The death toll in the Bahamas has risen to 30.
Hurricane Dorian was one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record when it hovered over the Bahamas earlier in the week. Now that it has moved away, a fuller picture from the ground has begun to emerge, and with it, harrowing stories of survival.
As officials were taking stock of the storm’s toll — at least 30 people were dead, the government announced Thursday night — relatives of some residents of the Abaco Islands, in the north of the archipelago, were reconnecting with their loved ones.
Sandra Cooke, a resident of Nassau, said that during the storm, a roof on an Abaco Islands building had collapsed on her sister-in-law. Her brother could not find his wife at first, but the family dog eventually detected her in the rubble. When there was a break in the storm, neighbors helped free her.
Ms. Cooke was reunited with her sister-in-law on Tuesday.
“She was trapped under the roof for 17 hours,” Ms. Cooke said on Wednesday, adding that she had hired a private helicopter service to take the rescued woman to Nassau.
[Read more about the stories of survival, and of loss, in the Bahamas.]
How The Times is covering Hurricane Dorian.
The New York Times has half a dozen correspondents on the ground covering Hurricane Dorian from locations including the Bahamas, the Carolinas and Florida. You can follow our correspondents on social media: Patricia Mazzei, Richard Fausset, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Frances Robles and Kirk Semple.
The Times has published live updates for the past 11 days, as Hurricane Dorian blew through the Virgin Islands but largely spared Puerto Rico, then built up strength and devastated the Bahamas, before moving toward the United States mainland. Here is the latest map tracker and tips on how to stay safe.
We are continuing to cover the destruction in the Bahamas and how members of the Bahamian diaspora in Miami are scrambling to send aid to those affected by the storm and to locate their loved ones in the islands. If you would like to help, we have an article about on how to do that.
As Florida braced for a direct hit that ultimately did not come, our correspondents looked into how the storm could test the state’s nursing homes, the difficult question of whether to stay or evacuate and lessons learned from past storms.
We have received more than 500 questions from readers, including what makes a hurricane change course and how the eye of the storm comes into play. Adam Sobel, an atmospheric scientist and director of the Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate at Columbia University, shared his answers. We also took a look at climate change and how it plays a role in the way hurricanes take shape.
Reporting was contributed by Richard Fausset, Patricia Mazzei, Rachel Knowles, Frances Robles, Adeel Hassan, Sarah Mervosh and Lauren Hard.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/us/hurricane-dorian-updates.html
2019-09-06 10:50:50Z
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