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MIAMI: Tropical Storm Hanna bore down on the US east coast on Saturday after sweeping across the Caribbean and leaving at least 163 dead in Haiti.
The even more powerful Hurricane Ike threatened Caribbean islands and the United States.
Hanna prompted emergency preparations along more than 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) of the North and South Carolina coastline, after unleashing flooding and landslides in Haiti that displaced thousands and left as many as 200,000 with little or no food or water.
The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami forecast the storm will crash ashore in the Carolinas and race up the coast, potentially affecting tens of millions of Americans.
Heavy rain, wind and high surf began to lash the southeast coast late Friday after the governors of North Carolina and Virginia declared states of emergency. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford called for people to evacuate two counties.
At 0300 GMT Saturday, the stormed packed sustained winds near 110 kilometres (70 miles) per hour. The eye of the storm was about 95 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, the NHC said.
"Although no significant change in strength is forecast before landfall, it would take only a small increase in wind speed for Hanna to become a hurricane," it added.
Several southern US states have endured Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricane Gustav in recent weeks and officials expressed concern that people along the coast were not taking Hanna seriously.
"The response is not what we would want it to be," Sam Hodge, emergency manager for Georgetown, South Carolina, told CBS News.
"We feel there should be more people evacuating."
Authorities also kept a wary eye on the more formidable Hurricane Ike out in the Atlantic.
Ike was forecast to spare Haiti while the Caribbean nation struggled to recover from devastating flooding from Hanna which killed 163 people. "At least for now" Haiti looks likely to be spared yet another hit, NHC spokeswoman Karina Castillo said.
The poorest country in the Americas is now reeling from the devastation inflicted by three storms in as many weeks that killed more than 280 people.
The country's third largest city Gonaives remained under water following Hanna, and Senator Yuri Latortue who represents the city called the situation "catastrophic".
"I know perfectly well that the hurricane season has hit our entire country, but the situation in Gonaives is truly special, because now some 200,000 people there haven't eaten in three days," Latortue said.
A lifeline was extended to thousands when a boat carrying World Food Program relief supplies docked at Gonaives port, the WFP said.
Haiti's government pleaded for international aid, and the United Nations prepared an emergency appeal. Switzerland, France, the United States, the European Union and the Red Cross were among early aid givers.
Ike was on course to batter the Bahamas Saturday and Sunday before possibly slamming into Cuba, another island nation recently battered by this hurricane season's conga line of storms.
Ike is then forecast to make landfall in south Florida on Wednesday as a major hurricane, Castillo warned.
Densely populated south Florida, including the cities of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, has not been hit by a major hurricane since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 – the costliest natural disaster in US history until it was topped by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Ike was downgraded slightly Friday but remained a "major hurricane" as it churned over the western Atlantic, with sustained winds of 185 kilometres (115 miles) per hour – a category three on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, the NHC said.
As of 0300 GMT Saturday, Ike was 580 kilometres (360 miles) northeast of Grand Turk Island and was moving west at about 26 kilometres (16 miles) per hour, the NHC said.
Ike and Hanna were part of a trio of storms in the Atlantic that includes Tropical Storm Josephine in the eastern Atlantic near Cape Verde.
They follow Hurricane Gustav which ripped through the Caribbean then slammed the US Gulf Coast, and Tropical Storm Fay which pounded several Caribbean islands and then dumped record amounts of rain in Florida.
- AFP/so
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