Little damage as Hanna soaks Carolinas but Ike is approaching fast

Officials in South Carolina and North Carolina said they had received no reports of deaths or injuries by midday Saturday. Both states experienced isolated flooding, downed trees and beach erosion. Some 53,000 customers suffered power failures in North Carolina, many of them in inland areas where rain was heaviest, and 1,300 lost electricity in South Carolina. About 2,000 people spent the night in shelters in the two states.

"It's been an awning here, a satellite dish there," said Kelly Brosky, a spokeswoman for Horry County, which includes North Myrtle Beach. "Given that inland areas got five to six inches of rain, the flooding really hasn't been anything major."

The storm reached the Washington area by midday, producing torrential rains. Dominion Virginia Power reported about 28,000 power failures in the state, and several neighborhoods in Washington and Maryland were also without power.

Though not debilitating, the storm extended a two-week assault by tropical weather systems on the coastal South that began with Tropical Storm Fay's soggy trek through Florida and continued with Hurricane Gustav's landfall in Louisiana. The region had seen a relative respite since 2005, the year of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Hurricane Ike grew to fierce Category 4 strength Saturday as it roared on an uncertain path that forced millions from the Caribbean to Florida, and Louisiana to Mexico, to nervously wonder where it would eventually strike.

Hundreds of people in Haiti have fled the waterlogged city of Gonaives for higher ground as a new storm, Hurricane Ike, threatened to compound a disaster caused by a previous storm.

Hurricane Ike strengthened to an "extremely dangerous" category four storm in the Atlantic on Saturday, according to the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC).