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 ‘‘pre- landfall’’ 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
A Danish inventor accused of killing a Swedish journalist on his homemade submarine has told a court that she died when a hatch door accidentally fell on her head. Peter Madsen, 46, appeared in a Copenhagen court yesterday. He was initially accused of the negligent manslaughter of Kim Wall, 30, who vanished after boarding his submarine on August 10 to conduct an interview during a brief voyage, but he is now being held on suspicion of murder. Wall’s dismembered torso was found floating off Copenhagen on August 21. Madsen said the 70-kilogram hatch door fell on Wall’s head, killing her, after he lost his footing. In a panic, he threw her body overboard, he said, insisting that it was intact.
An episode of the British children’s television show Peppa Pig has upset Australian viewers because of its message that spiders are ‘‘very, very small and they can’t hurt you’’. The episode is about a large spider which an initially fearful Peppa ends up befriending, feeding it tea and cake, and tucking it into bed in a doll’s house. Australia has several species of extremely poisonous spiders, and their bites can be deadly without antivenom treatment. After a Sydney mother complained to pay-TV provider Foxtel, children’s channel Nickelodeon said it would not pull the episode, but later reversed its decision.