Irma set to pummel Caribbean and US

PUERTO RICO: Hurricane Irma, a record Category 5 storm, churned across the Atlantic Ocean overnight on a collision course with Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, threatening to lash the northern Caribbean with a potentially devastating mix of fierce winds, surf and rain.

The eye of Irma, a monster storm packing winds of 295kmh, was expected to cross the northern Leeward Islands, east of Puerto Rico, last night, and was on track to reach Florida by Saturday, the United States National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami said.

The threat posed to the US mainland by Irma, described by forecasters as a ‘‘potentially catastrophic’’ storm, looms as Texas and Louisiana continue to reel from widespread destructive flooding from Hurricane Harvey.

Hurricane warnings have been posted for several of the Leeward Islands, including Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, and St Kitts and Nevis, as well as for the US and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Along the beachfront of Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, work crews scrambled to cover windows with plywood and corrugated metal shutters. ‘‘This is the biggest storm we have seen here,’’ said Jonathan Negron, 41, as he supervised workers boarding up his souvenir shop.

The NHC said Irma ranked as one of the five most powerful Atlantic hurricanes during the past 80 years, and the strongest Atlantic storm outside the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in NHC records.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello urged the 3.4 million residents of the US territory to seek refuge in one of 460 hurricane shelters in advance of the storm.

Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency, and said he had asked US President Donald Trump to make a ‘‘prelandfall’’ emergency declaration.

Gary Randall, head of the Blue Waters Resort on Antigua’s north coast, said staff had boarded up windows, stripped trees of coconuts and fronds and secured anything that could become a hazard. He expected the hotel’s beach to be swept away and much of the 108-room property to be flooded.

Hurricane watches are in effect for Guadeloupe, Haiti, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas.

Irma is expected to become the second powerful storm to thrash the US mainland in as many weeks, but its precise trajectory remains uncertain. - Reuters

PHOTO: REUTERS A member of the Dominican Republic’s Emergency Operations Committee monitors the trajectory of Hurricane Irma at a control centre in the capital, Santo Domingo. The republic is one of many Caribbean nations in the path of Irma, which has been described...