CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Hurricane Joaquin strengthened again on Saturday as it pulled away from the Bahamas on a track far from the U.S. East Coast, leaving the fate of a cargo ship and its 33 crew that vanished in the storm still unknown.
Meanwhile, vast swaths of U.S. Southeast and mid-Atlantic states braced for more heavy rains and flooding from a separate weather system which has already caused two deaths, washed out roads and prompted evacuations and flash flood warnings.
At 2 p.m. EDT, Joaquin, which strengthened significantly early Saturday, had maximum sustained winds of 155 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The storm, a potentially catastrophic Category 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, was about 550 miles southwest of Bermuda, the Miami-based NHC said.
After battering the Bahamas for more than two days, the center of Joaquin was churning away from the island chain and was expected to pass west of Bermuda, well off the U.S. coastline, on Sunday, the NHC said.
It warned that any slight eastward deviation in the forecast track could put the storm dangerously close to Bermuda, however.
The U.S. Coast Guard said there was still no trace on Saturday of El Faro, a 735-foot cargo ship that went missing off Crooked Island in the Bahamas on Thursday morning after it was overcome by heavy weather from Joaquin.
The vessel, with 28 U.S. citizens and five Polish nationals aboard, was headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Jacksonville, Florida when it reported losing propulsion and that it was listing and taking on water, the Coast Guard said. As many as four people on the ship are from Maine.
There had been no further communications after a distress call received at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, the Coast Guard said. Search and rescue efforts continued Saturday, after covering 850 square nautical miles on Friday, but turned up no sign of the ship.
“We are very surprised that we lost all communication with the ship,” Mike Hanson, a spokesman for El Faro’s owner, Tote Maritime Puerto Rico, told Reuters on Saturday.
“The ship was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he added, saying Joaquin was just a tropical storm when El Faro set out but it intensified rapidly into a major hurricane.
While Joaquin has continued to shift away from the U.S. East Coast, dangerous flooding triggered by heavy rainfall was expected across much of the Carolinas and parts of Georgia, Virginia and New Jersey this weekend, U.S. forecasters said.
In Washington, President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in South Carolina.
It has been raining across much of the region all week, and the accumulated rainfall, coupled with more on the way from a weather system loosely connected with Joaquin, has prompted repeated flood warnings from the National Weather Service.
South Carolina emergency officials said flash flood warnings were issued for numerous counties on Saturday. They said scores of homes had already been evacuated, including in the coastal county that includes Myrtle Beach.
More than 15 inches of rain has fallen over the popular beach area since Friday, with more expected, the National Weather Service in Wilmington, North Carolina, reported.
“These kind of prolific rainfalls are not unprecedented, but this is definitely one for the history books,” said NWS forecaster Dave Loewenthal in Wilmington.
“We have had numerous reports of road closures. We have had roads washed out, sinkholes forming,” he said. “It’s really a mess and we are going to have significantly more problems with multiple rivers reaching moderate flood (level) or higher.”
A statement from the North Carolina governor’s office said up to 500 residents of Brunswick County had been evacuated from their homes Friday night into early Saturday morning due to flooding from heavy rains and a levee failure in South Carolina.
NWS meteorologist Steve Pfaff said the floods had been triggered by rains totaling over 15 inches.
“It’s definitely a life-threatening situation,” Pfaff said.
“There were people that were stuck in vehicles that were flooded and water in some of the homes was up over the electrical outlets,” he said.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said the effect of the heavy rains on agriculture was a major concern. “North Carolina farmers have been harvesting crops at a feverish pace to minimize economic loss,” the statement from his office said.
No deaths or serious injuries were reported in the Bahamas due to Joaquin, which destroyed houses, uprooted trees and unleashed heavy flooding on several smaller islands, but two deaths in the Carolinas on Thursday were linked to rain there.
Before an earlier shift in Joaquin’s trajectory, New York and New Jersey, where Superstorm Sandy killed more than 120 people and caused $70 billion of property damage in October 2012, both faced potential threats from the storm.