Hurricane Ernesto makes landfall in Bermuda as residents hunker down
Al Jazeera
Bermuda minister warns third hurricane of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season ‘is not a storm to be taken lightly’.
Hurricane Ernesto has made landfall in Bermuda, leaving tens of thousands of people without power as it lashed the British island territory with powerful winds, a dangerous storm surge and potentially deadly flooding.
The Category 1 storm brought maximum sustained winds of 140km/h (87mph) to Bermuda – home to about 64,000 people – at 6am local time (09:00 GMT) on Saturday.
Electric utility BELCO said the storm caused nearly island-wide outages, with about 26,100 of roughly 36,000 customers without power at 9am (13:00 GMT).
Ernesto is expected to slowly depart Bermuda over the course of the day, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in the United States.
It will then move north-northeast on a track that would take it near or east of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador on Monday night, the NHC said.
