Bahamas taking a battering from Category 3 Hurricane Irene

2 P.M.: Hurricane Irene continued to intensify, reaching 120 mph as the eye crossed Acklins and Crooked Islands in the southeastern Bahamas.

The National Hurricane Center said Irene was large and dangerous storm likely to further strengthen over the next day, potentially to a Category 4 hurricane. Forecasters said the hurricane also was moving northwest, a sign it was beginning the turn expected to keep its worst winds well off the coast of Florida. Much of the Atlantic Coast, from North Carolina to New England, remained in the danger zone for a potential landfall later in the week.

As Irene battered islands at the southern end of the chain, Bahamians in Nassau stressed that they had confidence in that the nation’s strict building codes would limit losses.

"We're used to hurricanes," said Felton Rolle, who owns the Salina Point resort in Acklins, where Irene's eye crossed around noon. "We usually fare pretty well. I think the damages are not going to be major, We'll lose shingles, so the biggest problem will be clean up. It's a rural area, so there are going to be a lot of trees to clean up."

Rolle said he called Acklins at 6 A.M. from Nassau and learned the power was had already been out for an hour and that winds were very strong. By early afternoon, he could not get any calls through.

"I prefer to ride a storm in Acklins. You don't run away,’’ he said. “You prepare."

1:30 P.M.: Harvey Roberts, the administrator of Mayaguana Island in the Bahamas, said fierce winds began were continuing Wednesday morning as the eye of powerful Hurricane Irene roared just offshore.

"It got really bad this morning at 10," he told The Miami Herald. "Things are pretty rough. The top of a neighbor’s roof is in my yard. A lot of trees are down. The wind is blowing really, really hard."

He said the police inspector surveyed the island, home to some 300 people, and found a church with its side blown off in Abraham Bay and a utility pole on fire because a tree fell on it. Only 15 people left their homes for government shelters.

Roberts said the island was without power. By late morning Wednesday, the rains had appeared to cease, but the winds were still strong.

"I believe that after 18 hours already, this is the tail end for us," he sad. "It really has not let up yet. It’s quite a big hurricane, isn’t it?"

After blowing over Mayaguana, the storm was expected to head right through the channel, hitting smaller islands surrounded by shallow water prone to flooding, said National Emergency Management Agency Director Capt. Stephen Russell.

"The winds drag this water and throw it right on land," Russell said, pointing to a map of the islands in his Nassau office. He pointed to 365 private keys near Exumas (check spelling) which he said were at particular risk. "It’s too early to tell what the damage is: we’re not asking anyone to venture outside and check. I fear a Category 3 storm can do a lot of damage. We have shallow waters that can surge and cause serious flooding."

Nassau and other major cities should be brushed by the outer edges of the storm on Thursday.

"In 160 years, this is only the third storm to go straight up the channel like this," he said.

The last was Floyd in 1999. "It was bad. I was here."

All government offices will close at 3, in the hopes that the last of the residents to board up will do so.

11 A.M.: The now distinctly visible eye of Hurricane 115-mph Hurricane Irene was passing directly over Acklins Island, a low-lying island in the southeastern Bahamas where some residents in vulnerable coastal homes had vowed to ride out the storm.

The National Hurricane Forecasters said Irene, now a major Category 3 hurricane, could intensify further over the next day, potentially into a Category 4 storm packing 135-mph winds.

As Irene moves north and beyond the Bahamas, forecasters said cooler ocean temperatures are expected to take a little steam out of the system but it could still be a major storm as it approaches the North Carolina coast Saturday morning.

The greatest impact to South Florida is likely to be along the beaches, where pounding surf could cause erosion.

8 A.M.: Hurricane Irene roared back to life as a Category 3 storm as it bore down on the Bahamas Wednesday morning in an assault that was expected to last through Thursday.

After being temporarily downgraded to a 90-mph, Category 1 hurricane late Tuesday, Irene’s top winds were near 115 mph by 8 a.m. Wednesday, nudging it into Category 3 territory.

“Some additional strengthening is forecast during the day or so,” the National Hurricane Center said in its most recent public advisory.

While South Florida is out of danger, the southeastern Bahamas were experiencing hurricane conditions Wednesday morning as the eye of the storm headed for Crooked Island and Acklins Island.

Stephen Russell, director of the Bahamas National Emergency Management Center said he was particularly concerned about residents in low lying areas in those islands who are resisting the appeal to evacuate.

"They are right in the direct path of a Category 3 storm, but there has been resistance," he told the Miami Herald. "We are trying to let them know what they are up against. People have been in their homes for years and they don’t feel comfortable anywhere else."

He said some people began heeding the appeal Wednesday morning.

About 111 people had already turned to shelters, he said. There had been no reports of injuries or fatalities Wednesday morning.

Skies were sunny under a brisk wind in Nassau, where last-minute preparations were still being made.

“I’ve had my house ready since Monday,” said Buzzy Saunders as he led a crew of workers boarding up a shopping center. “I looked at that map and thought: ‘That doesn’t look like something to fool with.’”

The National Hurricane Center said tropical storm-force winds are expected to begin over the central Bahamas Wednesday morning, with the weather deteriorating to hurricane conditions by the evening. The northwestern Bahamas can expect tropical storm conditions Wednesday night and the full force of the hurricane by Thursday.

For Bahamians, the prospects of 125 mph winds and 10 inches of rain weren’t the only worries. The surrounding sea, swept inland by a storm surge that could hit 11 feet, might be the deadliest potential threat.

“It’s always a big concern,’’ said Geoffrey Greene, senior meteorologist with the Bahamas Department of Meteorology. “We are a flat island nation. We know we’re going to get some flooding.’’

But where — and whether — Irene was going to make landfall in the United States remained uncertain. The National Hurricane Center reported “high confidence’’ in a track that would keep Irene’s powerful core some 200 miles off the Florida coast over the next two to three days. After that, the track remained uncertain. At 8 a.m., the forecast cone, which computer models continued to nudge eastward, stretched from South Carolina to New England.

In a joint conference, hurricane center director Bill Read and Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, warned that the unusually large storm could strike anywhere in the target zone or rake the Mid-Atlantic coast and possibly even trigger severe flooding in already saturated New England.

“The impact could be widespread, depending on exactly where the storm goes,’’ Read said. “We see no reason for it not to be a major hurricane.”

Fugate warned that Irene’s path so close to the coast would demand that communities “be on a hair-trigger” when it comes to evacuations.

The center’s official track took Irene across North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Saturday but dangerous surf could begin piling up across much of the East Coast beginning Friday.

Early Wednesday morning, tourists on a small North Carolina island began evacuating in the first test of whether people will heed orders to get out of the way of what could be a monstrous storm.

It won’t be an easy task to get thousands of people off Ocracoke Island, which is accessible only by boat. Ocracoke is home to about 800 year-round residents and thousands of vacationers each summer. Tourists started evacuating Wednesday at 5 a.m.; the first ferry to leave the island early in the morning carried about a dozen cars.

The island’s residents have been told to evacuate Thursday.

For South Florida, there would be no repeat of Andrew, the last major hurricane — meaning with sustained winds of 111 mph or more — to hit Miami-Dade 19 years ago Wednesday.

The risk of a direct strike or hurricane force winds in South Florida had dramatically lessened — barring a radical and unanticipated change in Irene’s course, But forecasters stressed the coast could still feel the storm’s fringe. Tropical storm force winds extended 200 miles from the center.

With seas running eight to 12 feet, the National Weather Service in Miami posted a hurricane watch for Atlantic waters. The forecast for Miami-Dade and Broward counties on Thursday and Friday called for rough inshore waters, a 50 percent chance of thunderstorms and steady 18-20 mph winds, with sporadic gusts to 32 mph.

The winds could become stronger across South Florida if Irene wobbles closer, said weather service meteorologist Robert Molleda.

“The serious threat to South Florida is lessening but we still have a threat of some peripheral impacts,’’ he said.

School superintendents and emergency managers in South Florida continued to monitor the storm, while airports reported a fresh batch of flight cancellations.

Miami International Airport said Wednesday morning that nine arrivals and five departures had been canceled to and from the Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport reported 14 cancellations into and out of the Bahamas.

Irene left some damage in its wake, with the most serious impact in Puerto Rico, but no reported deaths.

President Barack Obama, at the governor’s request, issued a disaster declaration for the island, which was hit with power outages affecting nearly one million people and widespread flooding.

In the Dominican Republic, Irene left a path of flooding, felled trees and downed power lines. It pummeled oceanfront communities in the west and north, damaging homes and forcing 12,500 people to seek shelter with friends, relatives or in community buildings. An estimated 200,000 were without power.

“There are palm trees all over the beach. It’s a mess,” said Carlos Peñalo, a fisherman in Cabrera, a seafront town of 13,000 on the north coast about 80 miles from the capital, Santo Domingo. “Rivers flooded, but there were not many homes damaged. But this will take a while to clean up.”

The hurricane warning that had previously been in effect for the Turks and Caicos Islands was changed to a tropical storm warning Wednesday morning.

Early reports of damage have so far included some missing boats and rooftops on the island of South Caicos.

Turks and Caicos islanders in Providenciales were still feeling Irene as it howled at times, "like a constant roaring thunder" early Wednesday morning.

"We are still in the thick of it," said Clayton Been, a local businessman, shortly before 8 a.m. "The storm seems to be sitting right over us. We have been under bombardment for hours now."

About an hour later, he said the weather was finally starting to let up.

Meanwhile, disaster officials in Haiti lowered the alert, an indication Irene had passed, but they warned of risks with flooding. Tuesday night they reported flooding in the capital’s largest slum Cite Soleil, which borders the ocean. There were also reports of blocked roads.

The government also reported about 500 evacuations, damaged coastal homes and overflowing rivers — but no significant damage.

The Bahamas may not be so fortunate.

Many island homes, even humble ones, are noted for their sturdy concrete construction and the islands have weathered many hurricanes. But stronger, major storms have wreaked havoc over the decades — most recently Floyd in 1999, which devastated Cat Island, Eleuthera and Abaco, and Ike in 2008, which damaged 80 percent of the homes on Grand Turk and sank just about every fishing boat.

Jamie Rhome, storm surge specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said surge could prove extremely dangerous as Irene churns across the 700 islands that make up the chain.

Historically, it’s surge, not wind, that claims the most lives in hurricanes, and many of the low-lying islands are vulnerable — particularly on their shallower western sides. The strongest surge, he said, could come as Irene passes to the east of the islands, with the counter-clockwise winds slowly pushing seawater inland — topped by angry waves.

The predicted 11-foot surge, Rhome said, is a “worst-case’’ scenario and impacts will vary from island to island.

At Cape Eleuthera Resort & Yacht Club, workers were clearing first-floor rooms in anticipation of a damaging surge.

“There’s definitely nervousness,’’ said Beth Watson, Fort Lauderdale-based sales and marketing director for several hotels. “This is like every single island was going to get affected.”

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham told reporters Tuesday that he was confident Bahamas would weather the storm because of its strong building code. “That’s not to say that sometimes people don’t cheat and build homes that are not up to code,” he said.

“We can and will replace and restore anything we may lose,” Ingraham said. “We cannot replace life, hence my urgent and repeated appeals for the observance of safety measures. I pray God’s blessings on us all.”

He recalled that Tuesday was the 19th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew in the Bahamas in 1992. That storm battered the Family Islands, principally North Eleuthera including Spanish Wells and Harbour Island; Cat Island, Abaco, Chub and Cat Cay.

“The lessons learned from Andrew set the stage for hurricane preparedness and response in our country and led to the formalization of emergency response in the National Emergency Management Agency,” he said. “In the years following Andrew, we withstood the impacts of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Michelle in 2001, and the terrible cluster of Hurricanes Francis, Jeanne and Wilma between 2004 and 2005; these latter so severely impacted Grand Bahama Island that the islands’ economy has never fully recovered.”

Staff writer Frances Robles reported from the Bahamas. Ezra Fieser reported from the Dominican Republic. Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles, reporting from Haiti, contributed to this story, as did staff writers Laura Figueroa, Laura Isensee and Lidia Dinkova. This report was also supplemented with information from the Associated Press.

This story was originally published August 24, 2011 at 6:56 AM with the headline "Bahamas taking a battering from Category 3 Hurricane Irene."