More than two million coastal residents from north Florida to the Carolinas fled inland yesterday to escape the wind and rain of Hurricane Floyd, jamming highways in what Mr James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called the largest evacuation in the country's history.
Floyd, one of the strongest storms ever tracked in the Atlantic, was battering the north Florida coast yesterday morning as it steamed northward about 100 miles out to sea.
It was expected to make landfall near the South Carolina-North Carolina border early this morning, forecasters at the National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.
Two million people were under evacuation orders in Florida and Georgia alone, and the Governor, Mr Jim Hodges, ordered the entire South Carolina coast to evacuate.
Dealt a stunning blow by Hurricane Floyd, the far-flung islands of the Bahamas began digging out yesterday from the damage caused by their worst hurricane strike since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
One man apparently drowned on Tuesday as Floyd pounded the northern islands in Freeport, Grand Bahama island, the Broadcast Corporation of the Bahamas reported.
Floyd unleashed driving rains that sparked widespread flooding and shut Freeport International Airport.
In the capital, Nassau, further south in the archipelago, residents lost power and phone service for hours, trees were uprooted and many homes damaged, but there were no reports of casualties.
Although the powerful eye of the storm skirted New Providence, the island where Nassau is located and where about two-thirds of the Bahamas' 287,000 people live, winds reached nearly 100 m.p.h. and a 10-foot storm surge sent rivers of seawater along coastal roads.
The Bahamas is an archipelago of more than 700 islands stretching from just off the coast of Florida to north of Haiti.
The highest point is about 122 metres above sea level and most islands are lower than 30 metres, making them vulnerable to tidal surges.
The worst of Floyd's damage may have occurred in the Family Islands, small patches of low-lying coral rock scattered over hundreds of miles. Floyd's eye, surrounded by winds exceeding 150 m.p.h., ran directly over several small cays in the northern Bahamas. Communication with many of the islands was down and government officials were trying to arrange flights to Eleuthera, Abaco and other hard-hit islands, officials said.
Following on Floyd's trail is another powerful hurricane ploughing across the Atlantic. Hurricane Gert could hit islands in the eastern Caribbean in the next few days.
The Australian swimmer, Ms Susie Maroney, staggered on to a remote Cuban beach late on Tuesday after a treacherous crossing from Jamaica in a broken sharkcage through seas whipped up by Hurricane Floyd.
"I'm very happy that it's over," an exhausted but exhilarated Ms Maroney (24) said, emerging under torrential rain from the stormy waters where she had spent the last 36 hours becoming the first person to swim from Jamaica to Cuba.