5,50,000 People Affected: Hurricane Sally

Crisis

Storm Sally is bringing torrential rain and flooding to the Carolinas and Georgia, as it continues its path of destruction north from the US Gulf Coast. 

It has already battered Florida and Alabama with rain and storm surges, downing power lines, turning roads into rivers and leaving homes submerged. Coastal communities are now taking stock of the damage. One person was killed, and hundreds of thousands are without power. Besides the fatality reported in Orange Beach, Alabama, one person is also missing from the small coastal city in southwest Alabama, according to Mayor Tony Kennon.

“It was an unbelievably freaky right turn of a storm that none of us ever expected,” he told the Washington Post. Pensacola, Florida, 30m (48 km) east of Orange Beach, was also badly hit, with a loose barge bringing down part of the city’s Bay Bridge. According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Category 2 hurricanes have sustained winds of 96 to 110 mph. The NHC says a Category 2 storm’s “extremely dangerous winds” usually cause damage to homes and shallowly rooted trees. As the storm moved north from the coast, some 550,000 residents in affected areas were left in the dark on Wednesday night, according to local reports.