Irma batters Cuba, eyes Florida
After laying waste to several Caribbean islands, Hurricane Irma made landfall in Cuba on Friday and was barrelling today towards Florida, where some 5.6 million people faced orders to evacuate as the monster storm.
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 slightly to a Category 4 hours later, swirling some 395 km from Miami and still packing powerful winds.
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.
Irma is expected to strike the Florida Keys late on Saturday before moving inland, and many residents have joined a mass exodus amid increasingly dire alerts to leave.
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.”