Irma’s tab for damages could top $200B.
Ports, fuel terminals, pipelines shut; power utility suffers severe blows
Just over two weeks after Hurricane Harvey struck the heart of U.S. energy production in Texas, Irma is threatening another region with almost $200 billion worth of damage.
Irma has knocked out power to 2.4 million customers, paralyzed tanker traffic and shut about 6,000 gasoline stations. Once the storm makes its way up Florida’s west coast, it’ll also threaten more than $1 billion worth of crops.
NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida Power & Light utility warned Sunday that some customers may go without power for weeks and parts of its system may need to be rebuilt “from the ground up.” The company took offline one of two reactors at its Turkey Point nuclear plant south of Miami.
Ports critical to supplying the state with gasoline and diesel were also closed, and energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Kinder Morgan Inc., shut fuel terminals and pipelines.
“Fuel deliveries in Florida are virtually nonexistent,” Mansfield Oil, a Georgia-based energy supplier, said in a report late Saturday. “Fuel markets will take time to fully recover, particularly if Irma damages fueling infrastructure.”
Irma, which is forecast to rake all of Florida’s west coast, threatens to send natural gas futures plunging by cutting demand from power plants
and will weigh on oil and refined products prices by blocking shipments to the nation’s third-largest gasoline market.
The hurricane may also wreak havoc on Florida’s farmlands, menacing $1.2 billion worth of production in the top U.S. grower of tomatoes, oranges, green beans, cucumbers, squash and sugar cane.
Citrus production is the most vulnerable of crops as Irma moves north along Florida’s west coast, said Paul Markert, a meteorologist at MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg, Md. About 25 percent of the crop may be lost.
Florida’s orange, grapefruit and other citrus trees are full of developing fruit that Irma may blow away. Winds could also destroy the trees themselves in a region that accounts for almost 10 percent of the nation’s fruit and vegetable farmland. Orangejuice futures and domestic sugar prices rallied last week as Irma drew closer.
Ports shut to traffic
Meanwhile, ports and terminals, including Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Port Everglades and Jacksonville, were closed to traffic. Florida, which depends wholly on pipelines and tankers for fuel supplies, was already facing fuel challenges after Hurricane Harvey knocked offline refining capacity in the Gulf Coast.
Kinder Morgan shut a pipeline system that carries gasoline, ethanol, diesel and jet fuel to landlocked Orlando from Tampa, all of its fuel terminals in Florida and the Elba Island liquefied natural gas plant in Georgia.
Florida Power & Light said in a press conference broadcast online Sunday that restoring electricity will be “one of the most complex” endeavors the utility has ever faced.
The feed to the broadcast itself cut out for several minutes due to a power failure.
“Unfortunately, we are not immune to Irma’s wrath,” Rob Gould, a spokesman for the utility, said after the feed for the webcast had been restored.
Irma’s path forced the largest evacuation in Miami-Dade County history and sent millions of Floridians fleeing the state’s first major hurricane since Wilma in 2005.
Irma’s last-minute shift westward may exacerbate damages for victims who expected to miss the worst of the storm and then were left with too little time to prepare.
“Most people expected it to impact the east coast rather than the west coast,” said Duncan Ellis, the U.S. property practice leader at Marsh & McLennan Cos.’ main brokerage unit. “It took a turn to the left, and that’s caused a bit of a scramble in getting properties ready for the storm and evacuations.”
Just before Irma’s landfall, Enki Research disaster modeler Chuck Watson said the storm could cost $192 billion and threatens $2 trillion of property. Total losses from Hurricane Katrina reached $160 billion in 2017 dollars after it slammed into New Orleans in 2005.
The storm’s impact rippled across the nation. In Atlanta, shoppers besieged grocery stores, stripping shelves of water, bread and milk. South Carolina opened shelters to accommodate an expected flood of refugees; in Florida, 6.5 million residents had evacuated.
Financial district floods
In Miami, at least two construction cranes collapsed under the force of ferocious winds, leaving them teetering on the sides of buildings under construction.
Firefighters ventured out in an armored vehicle to inspect one on downtown Biscayne Boulevard, said spokesman Capt. Ignatius Carroll. Fire officials asked neighbors to take refuge on the other side of their buildings.
Along flooded Brickell Avenue, the city’s financial district, side streets became tributaries and wind whipped up whitecaps on water coursing by office buildings.
At the J.W. Marriott hotel in the neighborhood, guests were pulled into an emergency shelter in the fifth-floor ballroom. Hotel staff set up a video screen to play movies, provided board games and even a special room for pet care. Speakers played soothing lounge music, and a giant video screen cycled images of tropical beaches.
Worse could be in store farther north. The storm’s track along Florida’s west coast “is almost, if not, a worst-case scenario for Tampa Bay,” said Rob Miller, a meteorologist at AccuWeather in State College, Pa. “It shoves all the water into Tampa Bay and then shoves it right into downtown.”
The continental shelf there is relatively shallow for as much as 90 miles offshore, said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Downtown, the commercial center, the port and cruise terminal were virtually deserted as rain increased and winds picked up. Buildings were fortified with boards over windows and 3-foot walls of sandbags at the doors.