People take shelter at Key West High School in Key West, Florida, as Hurricane Irma approaches. — Reuters photo
Destructive winds and deadly storm surges sparked one of the largest evacuations in US history
FORT MYERS, Fla: Hurricane Irma’s northern edge crashed into the Florida Keys yesterday, bringing a double barrel threat of destructive winds and life-threatening storm surges that sparked one of the largest evacuations in US history.
The storm, which hammered Cuba’s northern coast a day earlier, was a Category 4 hurricane about 15 miles (25km) south-southeast of Key West, Florida, as of 7am EDT (1100 GMT) with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (210kph), the National Hurricane Center said.
It was on a path that would take it along the state’s Gulf of Mexico coast near population centers including Tampa and St. Petersburg, the NHC said. Hundreds of thousands of people spent the night in emergency shelters.
Storm surges pushed by a high tide were forecast to be as high as 4.6 metres for low-lying area along the state’s southwest coast yesterday, which could produce catastrophic flooding for thousands of homes.
“Take action now to protect your life,” the National Weather Service in Key West advised. “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation.”
Officials in Florida have ordered a total of 6.3 million people, or about a third of the state’s population, to evacuate, creating massive traffic jams on highways and overcrowding shelters.
Irma, which killed at least 22 people in the Caribbean, was likely to cause billions of dollars in damage to the third-most-populous US state.
Wind gusts near hurricane force began to batter the Florida Keys late on Saturday, the NHC said, with Key West seeing gusts of more than 80 mph on Sunday morning and water levels about 2 feet (61cms) above normal.
The NHC has put out a hurricane warning and a tropical storm warning stretching through almost all of Florida into Georgia and South Carolina – an area where more than 20 million people live.
Florida Power & Light said more than 430,000 customers in Florida were without power as of Sunday morning.
Irma comes just days after Hurricane Harvey dumped record-setting rain in Texas, causing unprecedented flooding, killing at least 60 people and leaving an estimated $180 billion in property damage in its wake. Almost three months remain in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through November.
Tracking models showed Irma would make landfall on the Keys and head along Florida’s west coast, slamming the state that is a major tourism hub, with an economy comprising about 5 per cent of US gross domestic product.
Amid urgent warnings from state officials to evacuate before it was too late, downtown Miami was all but abandoned on Saturday.
On Florida’s west coast, resident Charley Ball said he expected a storm surge to completely engulf the island of Sanibel where he lives.
“Just left the island and said goodbye to everything I own,” said Ball, 62.
Hurricane Irma battered central Cuba on Saturday, knocking down power lines, uprooting trees and ripping the roofs off homes as it headed towards Florida.
Authorities said they had evacuated more than a million people as a precaution, including about 4,000 in the capital.
Gusts, torrential rain and storm waves lashed Caibarien, a town of 40,000 people on Cuba’s northern coast.
“Oh God, this is going to destroy the town,” said a local woman who identified herself only as Francis, 19.
She fled her home near the seafront to seek refuge in her grandfather’s house.
“The water was already at the corner near my house. By now it will be full of water,” she said.
Ambulances and firefighters patrolled streets littered with hunks of roofs, power lines and tree branches cast down by strong winds that blasted over Cuba on Saturday.
Ramon Cobas, 72, and his wife Rosa, 64, sheltered six relatives in their house, one of the sturdiest buildings in the town.
Fragments of glass rubble from other buildings struck the house as they huddled inside.
“These winds are stronger than those of Kate,” said Rosa, referring to the devastation wrought in 1985 by Hurricane Kate.
“I’m afraid even this house will fall down. And I am afraid for the neighbours.”
Residents were also afraid of flooding since the town has no storm drains in its streets.
Irma was “seriously” damaging the center of the island with winds up to 256 kilometers (159 miles) per hour, Cuban state media said.
The storm weakened slightly to Category 3 after making landfall in Cuba early Saturday, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
There were no confirmed casualties in Cuba. But the hurricane killed at least 25 people earlier on its path across the Caribbean.
Cuba’s state meteorological service reported waves of up to seven meters (23 feet) on the northern coast. Irma was affecting the “whole territory” of Cuba, it said.
“It has finished raining, but all night long there were terrible winds” that ripped up trees, knocked down power lines and damaged roofs, Gisela Fernandez, a 42-year-old nurse in central Villa Clara province, told AFP.
A large part of the center and east of the island was without power, according to television reports.
Havana was forecast to receive just the tail-end of Irma, but civil defense authorities placed it and two neighboring provinces on maximum flood alert.
Authorities in the Cuban capital, population two million, were evacuating people from low-lying districts at risk from Atlantic storm surges. — Agencies
Enormous waves lashed the Malecon, the capital’s emblematic seafront, causing seawaters to wash some 250 meters into the city, AFP journalists found.