The world's five most expensive natural disasters

After ravaging the Turks and Caicos Islands, Hurricane Ike is heading towarda the Bahamas, Cuba and the US Gulf Coast, as Tropical Storm Hanna continues to batter the eastern seaboard.

Ike, an “extremely dangerous” Category Four storm, barreled across the low-lying Turks and Caicos islands near the southern Bahamas in the early hours of this morning, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC). It was expected to career past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and towards Louisiana and its storm-battered city of New Orleans as early as Tuesday.

The NHC said the storm was bearing down on the Bahamas, although an immediate concern is its effect on Haiti, where a humanitarian crisis was unfolding after flooding from Hanna left more than 500 people dead and thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.

With winds near to 135 miles per hour, Ike is set to churn just north of Haiti on its way to Cuba, but further flooding on the island is expected as the storm’s outer rain bands unleash torrential downpours on the country’s vulnerable northwest coast.

“These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides over mountainous terrain,” the NHC warned, predicting “some strengthening” of the storm.

It was an ominous forecast for the poorest country in the Americas, already reeling from the destruction inflicted by three storms in as many weeks, and where the United Nations has warned the death toll from Hanna’s floods was “increasing hourly."

Some 650,000 people have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to UNICEF.

After Haiti, Ike is on course to plow into northeastern Cuba late tonight or early tomorrow, bombarding another mountainous island nation recently battered by this season’s devastating string of storms.

Cuba - where Hurricane Gustav damaged or destroyed 140,000 homes in the west a week ago - was on high alert. “Almost our entire country is in the danger zone,” Jose Rubiera, the head of Cuba’s Insmet forecast agency, told national television.

Tropical Storm Hanna yesterday battered 1,000 miles of eastern coastline in the US with powerful waves and heavy downpours. Hanna crashed into the border of North Carolina and South Carolina with winds of 70 miles per hour before weakening as it moved up quickly along the coast.

The storm churned over Virginia, but then gained strength slightly as Hanna streaked up the coast toward New England. In New York, Andy Murray's bid to reach the final was halted as both the men’s and women’s matches in the US Open tennis championships were postponed by a day.

Hanna could produce dangerous waves with a storm surge of one to three feet above normal tide levels, the NHC said, and is due to reach Canada’s eastern province of Nova Scotia this evening.

Several southern US states have endured a battery of storms in recent weeks, including Tropical Storm Fay late last month and Hurricane Gustav this past week. But 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."

As Hanna pounded the US coast, Florida officials were closely monitoring the more formidable Hurricane Ike, with Governor Charlie Christ warning that it could strike southern Florida by Tuesday.

“Ike has grown rapidly into a dangerous, powerful storm,” Christ told a news conference. “I urge all... Floridians to use the next few days to prepare. Our ability to prepare now will ensure everyone’s safety later."

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.

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