First residents are allowed home as Florida mops up after Hurricane Irma
RESIDENTS have been allowed to return to some islands in the hurricane-slammed Florida Keys as officials try to piece together the scope of Irma’s destruction and rush aid to the drenched and debris-strewn state.
Residents and business owners from Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada near the mainland were allowed back for their first look.
The Lower Keys, including the chain’s most distant and most populous island, Key West, with 27,000 people, are still off-limits, with a roadblock where the single highway to the farther islands was washed out.
Corey Smith, a delivery driver who rode out the hurricane in Key Largo, said power was out on the island, there was very limited fuel and supermarkets were closed. Branches and other brush blocked some roads.
“They’re shoving people back to a place with no
resources,” he said by telephone. “It’s just going to get crazy pretty quick.”
Seven deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with two in Georgia and one in South Carolina. At least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean.
An estimated 13 million Florida residents were without electricity – two-thirds of the state. More than 180,000 people huddled in shelters and officials warned it could
take weeks for electricity to be restored to everyone.
Off Florida’s southern tip, authorities were stopping people to check documentation such as proof of residency or business ownership before allowing them back into the Upper Keys. All three hospitals on the island chain were still closed.
The Keys are linked by 42 bridges that have to be checked for safety before motorists can be allowed on the farther islands.