25% of homes in Florida Keys are gone: FEMA
Ottawa fends off criticism over Irma response
LOWER MATECUMBE KEY, FLA. • Search-and-rescue teams made their way into the Florida Keys’ farthest reaches Tuesday, while authorities rushed to repair the lone highway connecting the islands and deliver aid to Hurricane Irma’s victims. Federal officials estimated one-quarter of all homes in the Keys were destroyed.
Two days after Irma roared into the island chain with 201 km/h winds, residents were allowed to return to the parts of the Keys closest to Florida’s mainland. But the full extent of the death and destruction there remained a question mark because communications and access were cut off in places.
“It’s going to be pretty hard for those coming home,” said Petrona Hernandez, whose concrete home on Plantation Key with 35-foot walls was unscathed, unlike others a few blocks away.
Elsewhere in Florida, life inched closer to normal, with some flights again taking off, many curfews lifted and major theme parks reopening. Cruise ships that extended their voyages and rode out the storm at sea began returning to port with thousands of passengers.
The number of people without electricity in the late-summer heat dropped to around 10 million — half of Florida’s population. Officials warned it could take 10 days or more for power to be fully restored. About 110,000 people remained in shelters.
Seven deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with four in South Carolina and two in Georgia. At least 35 were killed in the Caribbean.
French President Emmanuel Macron flew into Guadeloupe on Tuesday before heading to hard-hit St. Martin, where he met in debris-littered streets with residents. He was accompanied by doctors and teams of experts who were to help lead the recovery effort.
Macron said 11 people were killed in St. Martin, while another four people died on the Dutch side of the island, known as St. Maarten.
At a news conference in the Pointe-a-Pitre airport before departing for St. Martin, Macron said the government’s “top priority” was to help island residents return to normal life.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who arrived in St. Maarten on Monday, said the scenes of devastation he witnessed in the hurricane’s aftermath were the worst he had ever seen.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before and I’ve seen a lot of natural disasters in my life. I’ve seen a lot of war zones in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Willem-Alexander said on the Dutch national network NOS.
The Public Prosecutor’s office in St. Maarten says police and soldiers there have put an end to what it calls “large-scale robberies and looting” in the aftermath of Irma.
The office released a statement saying it doesn’t know how many people have been arrested but that some accused of minor offences have been released and some have been assigned to help the Caribbean island clean up from the ravages of the storm.
The government only has enough space to detain only those accused of the most serious offences.
International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says 691 Canadians have now been flown out of the Caribbean as the Liberal government fends off criticism of how it handled the disaster.
“We could have done better in terms of communication,” Bibeau acknowledged Tuesday before heading into the start of a two-day cabinet retreat in St. John’s, N.L., with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Bibeau said as far as she knows, all Canadians who wanted off the islands of Turks and Caicos and St. Maarten “have had the possibility” to get home as of Monday night.
She urged any other Canadians who still need help, or their families, to reach federal officials.
Transport Minister Marc Garneau said he understands the frustration, but continued to insist that Ottawa responded to a complex, difficult situation as quickly as it could.
“I’m not going to speak about the American situation,” he said of critical comparisons.
“We mobilized right away at the beginning to deal with this situation and one of the challenges which I spoke about was the challenge of being able to either land or take off from ... the Turks and Caicos and St. Martin.
“We had the availability of commercial airlines,” Garneau said. “The problem was getting them into a situation where they could actually bring the people back.”
Irma’s rainy remnants, meanwhile, pushed through Alabama and Mississippi after drenching Georgia. Flashflood watches and warnings were issued around the Southeast.
While nearly all of Florida was engulfed by the 640-kilometre-wide storm, the Keys — home to about 70,000 people — appeared to be the hardest hit. Drinking water was cut off, all three of the islands’ hospitals were closed, and the supply of gas was extremely limited.
Officials said it was not known how many people ignored evacuation orders to stay behind in the Keys.
I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE AND I’VE SEEN A LOT OF NATURAL DISASTERS.