NAS­SAU, Ba­hamas, Nov 7, CMC – A hur­ri­cane watch has gone in­to ef­fect for north­west­ern Ba­hamas as sub­trop­i­cal storm, Nicole, was mov­ing to­wards the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try on Mon­day with no change in strength.

The Mi­a­mi-based Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter (NHC) said that the storm, lo­cat­ed about 465 miles, east of the north­west­en Ba­hamas had max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 45 miles per hour (mph) mov­ing to­wards the north­west near nine mph.

“A slow­er north­west­ward mo­tion is ex­pect­ed lat­er this af­ter­noon through tonight. A turn to­ward the west or west-south­west is then fore­cast to be­gin by Tues­day night and that mo­tion should con­tin­ue through ear­ly Thurs­day,” the NHC said in its lat­est bul­letin.

“On the fore­cast track, the cen­ter of Nicole will ap­proach the north­west­ern Ba­hamas on Tues­day and Tues­day night, move near or over those is­lands on Wednes­day, and ap­proach the east coast of Flori­da Wednes­day night,” it added.

The NHC is pre­dict­ing high gusts and grad­ual strength­en­ing is fore­cast dur­ing the next few days. It said Nicole is fore­cast to be at or near hur­ri­cane in­ten­si­ty by Wednes­day or Wednes­day night while it is mov­ing near or over the north­west­ern Ba­hamas.

In a state­ment, Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Chester Coop­er said, “Please do not take this storm light­ly.

“Nicole pos­es an im­mi­nent threat to the is­lands un­der the warn­ing. Every­one must pre­pare for the worst.”

The Na­tion­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (NE­MA) Di­rec­tor, Cap­tain Stephen Rus­sell, who is urg­ing res­i­dents in vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas to leave their homes when called to do so, said an evac­u­a­tion or­der will like­ly be is­sued for parts of Aba­co and Grand Ba­hama lat­er on Mon­day.

The is­lands in the north­west Ba­hamas in­clud­ing Grand Ba­hama, Aba­co, Bi­mi­ni, the Berry Is­lands, Eleuthera, New Prov­i­dence and An­dros have all been placed un­der a hur­ri­cane watch.

“Plans are in mo­tion to evac­u­ate those per­sons in Sweet­ing’s Cay,” Rus­sel told a news con­fer­ence, adding “we’ve done it be­fore for a cat­e­go­ry one storm.”

He said fer­ries and bus­es will be mov­ing peo­ple from Sweet­ing’s Cay to the main land.

“Evac­u­a­tion or­ders will be is­sued lat­er this af­ter­noon once you see the 2.00 p.m. ad­vi­so­ry. We will an­nounce when we want the evac­u­a­tion to com­mence,” Rus­sell said, urg­ing res­i­dents to take the warn­ings se­ri­ous­ly.

“We can­not go man­han­dling per­sons off. I can­not ask emer­gency re­spon­ders to go yuck per­sons from ar­eas that have been de­clared evac­u­a­tion zones, but we can en­cour­age per­sons as best we can and their fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“If all else fails, we sim­ply have to say, ‘Look here, let us know who is your next of kin’. We can­not go wran­gling with per­sons to move. We’ve been through this many years and we have seen the dam­age com­ing from these storms.

“We’re los­ing lives be­cause of storm surges com­ing from these sys­tems. We don’t have time to go and try and beg and plead for per­sons to move. I can­not send back emer­gency re­spon­ders af­ter you refuse then change your mind,” Rus­sell added.

The NHC warned that Nicole is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce across the north­west Ba­hamas, and the cen­tral and north­ern por­tions of the Flori­da Penin­su­la rain­fall of up to four inch­es, with lo­cal max­i­mum of six inch­es.