Dramatic aerial footage shows storm surge flooding homes and a motel in North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Aug. 19 as Hurricane Erin battered the coast. Officials ordered evacuations in Dare County, warning of life-threatening winds and rising waters.

Hurricane Erin has once again started to restrengthen and could become a major hurricane as the dangerous storm churns in the Atlantic waters hundreds of miles off the U.S., prompting officials to close beaches along the East Coast from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast due to massive waves and potentially deadly rip currents just as families take their final vacations of the summer.