Carolinas brace for tropical storm Hanna

A man stacks bottles of water donated by the World Food Programme in Gonaives, Haiti. Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP

US: Fierce hurricane Ike weakened slightly as it charged across the Atlantic yesterday and took aim at south Florida, while tropical storm Hanna was set to crash ashore in the Carolinas after killing at least 136 people in Haiti.

Hanna is not expected to be anything more than a minimal category one hurricane when it reaches the US east coast somewhere near the North Carolina and South Carolina border early today, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Nevertheless, authorities have declared states of emergency. North Carolina ordered a voluntary evacuation on the fragile Outer Banks and coastal campinggrounds were shut as the eighth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season pulled away from the 700 far-flung islands of the Bahamas.

Ike was far more threatening. An extremely dangerous category four hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale on Thursday, it weakened a notch to a category three overnight with top sustained winds of 205km/h (125mph), the Miami-based hurricane centre said.

By 9am yesterday, it was spinning about 740km (460 miles)north of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean, still some days away from reaching any land.

Some further weakening was possible, but the hurricane centre said hurricane Ike was expected to remain a "major" storm of category three or higher.

The hurricane's course was riddled with uncertainty, but one possibility was for it to come ashore near the heavily-populated Miami area in south Florida as a ferociously destructive category four hurricane. - (Reuters)

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times