As it moves north, it’s expected to cause surf swells that will increase along portions of the southeastern coast of the US and Bermuda. Around 5am on Saturday, Maria was moving away from the Bahamas and into the open waters of the western Atlantic as a Category 3 storm.

However, the storm is still expected to wreak further havoc with rain of up to six inches expected through Saturday. Some of the island's 3.4million people planned to head to the US to temporarily escape the devastation. Across Puerto Rico, more than 15,000 people are in shelters, including some 2,000 rescued from the north coastal town of Toa Baja. The hurricane was expected to tally $45billion in damage and lost economic activity across the Caribbean, with at least $30billion of that in Puerto Rico, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia. Officials said 1,360 of the island's 1,600 cellphone towers had been downed, and 85 per cent of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out. The monster storm ripped roofs off buildings and flooded homes, leading to power outages that could last for months.

Hurricane Maria also claimed lives on the neighboring islands of Guadeloupe and Dominica, which suffered major destruction. Governor Ricardo Rossello has said seven people have died as the result of the storm in Puerto Rico. Share Hurricane Maria, the strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico since 1928, had maximum sustained winds of 155mph when it made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Thursday. Earlier, Puerto Rican authorities had scrambled to evacuate as many as 70,000 people after the National Weather Service warned that failure of the dam was 'imminent' and could lead to 'life-threatening' flash flooding. Nearly 16 inches of rain fell in the area, significantly raising water levels on the 90-year-old dam. 0| dagger kayaks| usa & canada| whitewater.

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