Shawdesh Desk: Hurricane Dorian churned along the south-eastern coast of the United States on Tuesday as the storm’s death toll in the Bahamas rose to seven.

The hurricane is weakening slightly but still gradually picking its pace.

Bahamas prime minister Hubert Minnis termed Dorian ‘one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,’ announcing the updated toll and saying that it would likely rise further.

‘We can expect more deaths to be recorded, this is just preliminary information,’ said Minnis.

As the storm moved away from the Bahamas, more accounts of the suffering it inflicted began to emerge.

Water ‘came over the roof. I would imagine 21 feet at least. We were doing all right until the water kept coming up and all the appliances were going around the house like a washing machine,’ crab fisherman Howard Armstrong told CNN.

‘My poor little wife got hypothermia and she was standing on top of the kitchen cabinets until they disintegrated… I kept with her and she just drowned on me,’ said Armstrong, who eventually made it to his boat.

Aerial footage of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas broadcast by CNN showed scenes of catastrophic damage, with hundreds of homes missing roofs, overturned cars, widespread flooding and debris strewn all over.

‘Parts of Abaco are decimated. There’s severe flooding, there’s severe damage to homes, businesses, other buildings and infrastructure,’ said Minnis.

Bahamas residents ‘endured hours and days of horror, fearing for their lives and the lives of their loved ones,’ he said.

The runways at Grand Bahama International Airport in Freeport, the island’s largest city, were under water, complicating rescue and recovery efforts.