Irma batters Florida
> Millions left without power, streets flooded
MIAMI: Hurricane Irma took aim at heavily populated areas of central Florida yesterday as it carved a path of destruction through the state with high winds and storm surges that left millions without power, ripped roofs off homes and flooded city streets.
Irma, once ranked as one of the most powerful hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic, came ashore on Florida on Sunday and battered towns up and down the state.
It weakened to a Category One hurricane, carrying maximum sustained winds of about 135kph by 2am (2pm in Malaysia) yesterday.
The storm was churning northwest in the centre of the state near the Tampa and Orlando metro areas early yesterday, the National Hurricane Centre said.
The storm killed at least 28 people as it raged westwards through the Caribbean en route to Florida, devastating several small islands, and grazing Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti before pummelling parts of Cuba’s north coast with 11m waves.
Irma was ranked a Category Five, the rare top end of the scale of hurricane intensity, for days and its ferocity as it bore down on Florida prompted one of the largest evacuations in US history.
Some 6.5 million people, about a third of the state’s population, had been ordered to evacuate southern Florida.
Residents fled to shelters, hotels or relatives in safer areas.
On Sunday, Irma claimed its first US fatality – a man found dead in a pickup truck that had crashed into a tree in high winds in the town of Marathon, in the Florida Keys.
Jonathan Brubaker, 51, waited out the storm bunkered in a recently constructed house in Bradenton, on the state’s west coast south of Tampa, with hurricane shutters drawn, flashlights and candles ready. As a radar app on his phone showed Irma passing by, he had seen little more than gusty winds. He still had power.
“I feel like we kind of dodged a bullet on this one,” he said, adding that he would wait until later in the day before trying to sleep.
“And then, I think we’re OK, knock on wood.”
High winds snapped power lines and left about 4.5 million Florida homes and businesses without power in the state, whose economy represents about 5% of US gross domestic product.
Irma was forecast to continue churning northwards along Florida’s Gulf Coast, further weakening along the way before diminishing to tropical-storm status over far northern Florida or southern Georgia. – Reuters