Kimberley Mullings has seen a lot of hurricanes.

In 2016 the roof of her family’s home, in Grand Bahama, was torn off by Hurricane Matthew. But she has never experienced anything like Hurricane Dorian.

“There is no way you can compare this to any storm I’ve been through before,” she said over the phone from Grand Bahama, where she is holed up at her mother’s house waiting for the storm to pass.

“The wind speed is ferocious. It’s vicious, that’s the only way I can describe it. You can’t sleep because you don’t want something to happen to you in your sleep.”

Dorian has the strongest landfall wind speed of any Atlantic hurricane on record and crashed across the island of Grand Bahama, east of Florida, more than 24 hours ago before settling over the island.

As of the early hours of Tuesday morning, it had not moved for more than 12 hours, meaning for that entire time the same communities had been lashed relentlessly by winds of up to 155mph (250km/h), enduring storm surges of up to 5.5 metres (18ft) above normal tide level.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hurricane Dorian, seen from the family home of Kimberley Mullings, in the Bahamas, on Tuesday. Photograph: Supplied/ Kimberley Mullings

“Think about one of your worst nightmares and that there is nothing you can do,” said Mullings, 27, who lives in North Carolina, but travelled home to be with her mother and niece when she heard about the storm. “There is nothing you could have done to have prepared for a storm like this.”

The town fighting the climate crisis to stay afloat, one hurricane at at time Read more

Her family did what they could to prepare for Dorian’s arrival. They have a generator so still have electricity, though their water has also been cut off. They have provided shelter to 12 people, including family friends.

They put down sandbags and tied down anything they thought could have become a missile. Even with all all these preparations, they are still not sure if their home will bear up against the unprecedented winds.

“We’ve seen trees snap, literally snap,” said Mullings. “We’ve seen pots with plants that are really heavy – 80lbs [36kg] – moving. We have seen cars crash into each other because of the wind speed and the flooding.”

Despite their garage being classified as being able to withstand hurricanes, she can hear and see it flex in the wind.

Kimberley Mullings. Photograph: Supplied/ Kimberley Mullings

“You know how you breathe in and out, imagine a door coming in and out like that. We can see that, we can hear it. We have hurricane impact doors and windows and we can still see the blinds move. The doors are shut, these lock in five places … they’re properly insulated and they’re still moving.”

Mullings is lucky. Her home is in one of the few parts of Grand Bahama that hasn’t experienced flooding. She has friends who live in two and three-storey homes on the island, where the water has risen so high they have been forced to wait out the storm in their roof spaces.

“Some of them have babies, newborn babies, children, who are in the roof with them. Their entire families are waiting it out with them. Some of them are wet.”

Several shelters, including one for people with special needs, have been compromised, she said, forcing people to take shelter in the hospital, which she has heard has also experienced serious flooding.

Play Video 1:02 Deadly Hurricane Dorian stalls over Bahamas – video

“The police can’t do anything. Their vehicles are all under water. Fire trucks are under water. It’s a pretty scary situation to be in. No one can come to help and you can’t leave to get anywhere.”

Mullings is already thinking ahead to what this hurricane, the latest in a run of devastating storms, will mean for the Bahamas. “I have great concerns about what it means for the country moving forward,” she said. “Every time we try to make a comeback we have another storm.”

For now all she, and the other 52,000 people on Grand Bahama, can do is wait for Dorian to finally move on.