Mighty Hurricane Irma makes landfall
ST JOHN’S: Monster Hurricane Irma slammed into the island of Barbuda early on Wednesday as it barreled its way across the Caribbean packing ferocious winds and potential for towering coastal surges.
The eye of the rare Category 5 storm made landfall on Barbuda — part of the twin island nation of Antigua and Barbuda — in the early hours of yesterday with winds gusting at up to 295kph, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The storm is headed northwest toward the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, with potential for storm surges of up to 6 metres above normal tide levels, it added.
The NHC said on Tuesday that while Irma was in the Atlantic headed for the Caribbean it was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in that ocean.
Ahead of the storm, which comes on the heels of the devastating Hurricane Harvey late last month in Texas, people packed shelters, stocked up on provisions and evacuated tourist areas as far north as Florida.
The storm is expected to last for days. The NHC said in a bulletin that the eye of Irma was passing over Barbuda.
As people hunkered down in the north of the Caribbean arc known as the Leeward Islands, the NHC said Irma was a potentially catastrophic storm.
“I am just praying to God. Everything happens for a reason,” an Antigua woman who gave her name as Kazia said as she endured what she called 100-130kph winds in a town called Sea View Farm. This was hours before the eye passed over.
Davina, a woman in the town of Yorks on the same island, said: “I can hear very strong winds and things being thrown around, but I am scared to look outside.”
Power was turned off across Antigua as a safety precaution because power lines are above ground. Families packed shelters.
One after another, scared people sitting in the dark called in to radio stations.
The core of the hurricane was expected to move over other parts of the northern Leeward Islands yesterday, the NHC said.
It will then head northwest toward the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico later today.
Category 5 is the highest on the scale for hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Schools and government offices in Guadeloupe have been ordered shut, while hospitals are stocking up on medicines, food and drinking water. People living on shorelines will be moved to safety, authorities said.
In Guadeloupe, families filed into shelters with their children, along with tourists.
“We came here to protect our little twoyear-old boy,” said a tourist who only gave his first name as Ludovic.
“We hadn’t prepared for this disaster scenario. Our rental home is beautiful but it only has bay windows.”
Florida expects the greatest danger from Friday night through Monday.
In a crowded supermarket in Miami Beach where people were scrambling to buy provisions, it was already difficult to find some basic supplies, like water.
“It’s because people go crazy and buy up everything,” 81-year-old resident Gladys Bosque said.
“There’s no water, no milk, there are very few cans — and no cat food.”
Category 5 hurricanes are rare. They can tear off roofing, shatter windows and uproot trees.