With winds building to 115 mph, Hurricane Bertha aimed its furious mass Tuesday toward the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, leaving four people dead in its wake.
Forecasters said the threat to the U.S. mainland from the first hurricane of the Atlantic season diminished Tuesday as Bertha was expected to turn away from the southeast coast. They said the storm's effects will likely be felt most in the United States at Cape Hatteras, N.C., by Friday morning."We're expecting the storm to curve, if conditions maintain, out into the open ocean," said meteorologist Bill Frederick of the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami. "I don't mind either."
Hurricane warnings were in effect for Turks and Caicos Islands and for the southeast and central Bahamas.
Tuesday morning the Coast Guard was searching around Puerto Rico for a boat with as many as 42 people aboard. Amateur radio operators picked up reports Monday a ship was drifting in the hurricane, but the Coast Guard has been unable to contact the vessel directly.
"The final transmission from the vessel said it was in the eye of the hurricane and people were jumping into the water," said Dennis Uhlenhopp, the Coast Guard spokesman in San Juan.
Early Tuesday, Bertha was upgraded to a Category Three storm because of its heightened wind speed. Its size - 460 miles around - makes it formidable, said Jerry Jarrell, deputy director of the Hurricane Center.
Bertha pushed through a string of northeastern Caribbean islands on Monday with winds of about 100 mph. The damage was far less than that wrought by hurricanes Luis and Marilyn last year.