Irma batters Cuba, eyes Florida
MIAMI: After laying waste to several Caribbean islands, Hurricane Irma made landfall in Cuba on Friday and was barrelling towards Florida, where close to 7 million people faced orders to evacuate.
Another 540,000 were asked to evacuate in eastern Georgia.
In South Carolina, a mandatory evacuation order was issued for eight barrier islands.
Irma — which has killed at least 19 people and devastated thousands of homes in the Caribbean — made landfall on the Camaguey Archipelago of Cuba as a maximum- strength Category 5 storm.
The hurricane weakened to a Category 3, but forecasters said it was expected to regain its strength as it moved towards Florida.
It was likely to make landfall in the US on Sunday.
In Cuba, officials reported “significant damage” in parts of the island’s centre without providing further details, but said there were no casualties yet.
More than a million people on the Caribbean’s largest island have evacuated as a precaution, authorities said.
Warning that Irma would be worse than Hurricane Andrew — which killed 65 people in 1992 — Florida’s governor said all 20.6 million Floridians should prepare to flee.
“If you’re in an evacuation zone, you should be very cautious, you should get out now,” Governor Rick Scott told CNN. “This is a powerful storm bigger than our state.”