Irma batters Caribbean, Florida braces for powerful storm

Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm to form in the open Atlantic Ocean, made landfall in the Caribbean early Wednesday and barrelled toward Puerto Rico on a path that may bring it ashore in Florida and destroy so much property that damages surpass Hurricane Katrina.

Irma has sent cruise lines and insurance stocks plunging, with Barclays estimating insured losses in a worst-case scenario at $130 billion. Natural gas slid on speculation that the storm will wipe out demand for the powerplant fuel, orange and cotton futures surged on potential crop damage, while lumber prices jumped on expected demand for reconstruction.

The eye of the storm was moving away from Barbuda and toward St Martin, on a track that should pass near or just north of Puerto Rico later Wednesday, the US National Hurricane Centre said in an advisory around 5 am New York time.

Irma comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey smashed ashore in Texas, knocking offline almost a quarter of US oil refining capacity and causing widespread damage, power outages and flooding. While models show Irma veering away from gas and oil platforms off the coast of Texas and Louisiana, sparing Houston more devastation, it threatens to wreak havoc upon the Caribbean islands and Florida.

Irma “is the kind of storm where you get thousands of lives lost,” said Chuck Watson, a Savannah, Georgia-based disaster modeler with Enki Research. “This is not going to be the big slow-motion flood like Harvey -this is a real, honest-to-God hurricane.” Irma’s top winds were 185 miles (300 kilometres) an hour early Wednesday, making the system a Category 5, the highest measure on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale. It’s on track to strike or graze Caribbean islands from Antigua to Puerto Rico through Wednesday, and Cuba by Saturday, the US National Hurricane Centre said. The government of the Bahamas has issued a Hurricane Warning for the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and a Hurricane Watch for the central Bahamas.

Irma’s top winds were 185 miles an hour early Wednesday, making the system a Category 5