HURRICANE IRMA
Powerful winds hit Sunshine State as 600,000 homes, businesses lose electricity
MIAMI path that would take it along Florida’s Gulf of Mexico coast near population centres, including Tampa and St Petersburg, the NHC said. Hundreds of thousands of people spent the night in emergency shelters.
Irma was expected to roar up Florida’s western coast yesterday, with hurricane-force winds extending 129km from its centre. Forecasters said tornadoes could form in many parts of the state.
“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 ordered 6.3 million people, 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.
Close to 600,000 homes and businesses were without power yesterday morning, utilities said.
Wind gusts near hurricane force began to batter the Florida Keys late on Saturday, the NHC said, with Key West seeing gusts of up to 413kph yesterday morning and water levels about 61cm above normal.
The NHC put out a hurricane warning and a tropical storm warning through almost all of Florida into Georgia and South Carolina, an area where more than 20 million people live.
Irma comes just days after Hurricane Harvey dumped recordsetting rain in Texas, causing unprecedented flooding, killing at least 60 people and leaving an estimated US$180 billion (RM755 billion) in property damage in its wake.
Almost three months remain in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through November. Reuters