Hurricane Dorian has battered the Bahamian islands of Great Abaco and Grand Bahama, peeling off roofs, toppling cars and snapping power lines as rising floodwaters threatened to engulf houses.
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The second-strongest Atlantic storm on record was forecast to keep pounding the archipelago through the day, then move towards the east US coast - where authorities ordered more than a million people evacuated in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia.
The slow-moving, category five storm left the islands covered with twisted metal and splintered wood. There were no immediate estimates of casualties.
Winds gusting up to 322 km/h destroyed or damaged more than 13,000 homes, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
Residents posted images online of water rising up the side of their houses as the National Hurricane Center warned of a possible storm surge of of 5.5 to 7 metres above normal tide levels, with higher destructive waves.
Residents said effects were already felt in Florida with high surfs, riptides and storm warnings up and down the Atlantic coast.
As of 5am on Monday local time, Dorian was stalled atop the Grand Bahama Island barely drifting westward at 2km/h, even as it packed winds of 270km/h with gusts upward of 322km/h), the NHC said.
Residents on Abaco posted video on social media showing floodwaters halfway up the sides of single-family homes and the island was littered with twisted metal and splintered wood.
Dorian was expected to linger over the Bahamas for most of Monday if not longer, forecasters said.
Early on Monday, the hurricane was about 200km from the Florida coast, parts of which were being evacuated, as it crawled westward. Farther north, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster ordered mandatory evacuations for parts of eight coastal counties effective at noon on Monday.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp ordered evacuations in all or parts of six coastal counties also effective at noon on Monday.
Even a glancing blow from one of the strongest storms ever to menace Florida could bring torrential rains and damaging winds, the NHC said.
Dorian was the strongest hurricane on record to hit the northwestern Bahamas as a life-threatening Category 5 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.
Julia Eaddy, 70, in Titusville, Florida, said she and her husband had ridden out several hurricanes before and were not fazed by the forecast. "I think it will be more of the same," she said.
Palm Beach County, the third most-populated county and home to President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, was among those with partial mandatory evacuations. Other counties announced voluntary evacuations.
"This looks like it could be larger than all of them," Trump said during a briefing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Dorian is expected to remain a hurricane for the next five days and jog northwest along or near the US east coast, forecasters said.
Australian Associated Press
