IRMA’S FURY
Monster ’cane lashes Florida
Makes landfall as Cat 4 4.4M without electricity HistoricH first for Atlanta
Hurricane Irma battered Florida on Sunday, barreling in as a Category 4 storm with torrential rain and winds topping 100 mph, turning the streets of downtown Miami into raging rivers as the eye of the enormous tempest churned its way up the Gulf Coast.
Irma officially made landfall on the US mainland at 9:10 a.m. when it struck Cudjoe Key, about 20 miles outside Key West, where the storm surge topped 10 feet.
In the afternoon, it rounded Florida’s southwestern corner and hugged the coast closely as it pushed toward Marco Island, Naples, Sanibel, Fort Myers and, beyond that, Sarasota, at 14 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended 80 miles from its center and stripped the tile off roofs, ripped boats from their moorings and flattened palm trees.
The massive 400-mile-wide storm weakened to a Category 2 as it made landfall a second time, in Naples, but forecasters warned of “life-threatening wind” and an even more devastating storm surge — of up to 15 feet — along the southwest coast.
By Sunday night, Irma had begun making its way north through Tampa and St. Petersburg — unleashing gusts of nearly 60 mph and maximum sustained winds of about 105 mph in some parts.
Police officers in Tampa, which has a metro-area population of more than 3 million, were ordered off the streets shortly before 5 p.m. as the storm bore down on the city.
Despite being downgraded, Irma continued to batter Florida’s western shores, causing widespread flooding and even tornadoes.
Miami’s downtown financial center was deluged, with white- caps racing between high-rise office buildings in waist-deep water.
Three construction cranes collapsed in 100-mph winds in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area — more than 100 miles from the eye of the storm.
Tornado warnings were issued throughout the day, and several twisters were spotted across the southern part of the state.
Gov. Rick Scott, who had warned that Irma would be “a killer,” put his faith in God.
“You know, people have asked, ‘What can we do?’ ” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “The first thing I tell them is, ‘Pray. Pray for everybody in Florida.’ ” In other developments:
More than 4.4 million homes and businesses lost electricity across the state — and Florida Power & Light warned that it could be weeks before service is fully restored.
President Trump signed a major-disaster declaration to speed federal funds to hurricaneravaged areas, and pledged to visit the Sunshine State “very soon.”
Irma tied for the seventh-strongest storm in US history, according to The Associated Press, matching the deadly Lake Okeechobee hurricane of 1928.
The National Hurricane Service forecast that Irma would quickly spread “very heavy rain and inland flooding” across the southeast United States.
Up to 20 inches of rain was ex- pected acrossf Florida and Georgia over the next five days, with lesser accumulations in the Carolinas, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.
In the Keys, fears of mounting fatalities mounted. “Disaster mortuary teams” were sent to the region — with officials saying they are “prepared for the worst.”
AccuWeather predicted that the combined damage cost of Irma and Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana will be $290 billion.
Irma killed at least 28 people while barreling across the Caribbean en route to Florida, where reports tied at least four deaths to the storm.
The first was a man who lost control of a pickup truck and smashed into a tree while hauling a generator through high winds Saturday in the Keys city of Marathon.
Another man died, apparently of natural causes, while taking shelter overnight Saturday in a classroom at Marathon HS. With nowhere to store his body, officials evacuated the room and sealed it off, witnesses told FLKeysNews.com.
On Sunday morning, a head-on crash killed two law-enforcement officers driving through rain in Hardee County, southeast of Tampa. Sheriff ’s Deputy Julie Bridges, a 13-year veteran with an 8-year-old son, had worked all night at a hurricane shelter and was headed out for supplies when
her vehicle collided with one driven by state Corrections Sgt. Joseph Ossman, 42.
Ossman, a 21-year veteran, was en route to his job at the Hardee Correctional Institution.
In Miami, Mayor Carlos Gimenez imposed a 12-hour curfew beginning at 7 p.m. The Miami-Dade Police Department tweeted it “will FULLY enforce” the order. Gimenez had announced on Saturday that he would not impose a curfew on Miami-Dade County “at this time,” but on Sunday said the move was needed “for the safety of our residents.”
About 170,000 people had taken refuge in about 650 emergency shelters as of early Sunday evening, according to the Florida Divi- sion of Emergency Management.
Despite the flooding, a group of teens braved the afternoon rain to gather with a pit bull on the steps of a bank to smoke a joint and swill vodka from a plastic water bottle before splashing around in the street.
“This is normal. We aren’t scared,” said one of the youths, who gave his name only as Vishnu. “We still have power — getting drunk, smoking weed and partying.”
Miami-Dade cops stopped responding to calls shortly after 9 a.m. and hunkered down in leaky police stations “for their safety,” according to a tweet from their department.
Fort Lauderdale police busted nine people caught on camera looting a shoe store ahead of the storm’s impact after local TV station WPLG recorded the crooks entering the Simon’s Sportswear shop through a broken window and running off with merchandise. Early Monday, Miami-Dade Police reportedly arrested 28 people for looting.
“Going to prison over a pair of sneakers is a fairly bad life choice,” Police Chief Rick Maglione posted on Twitter.
In Palm Beach County, officials said more than two dozen people were arrested for violating an open-ended curfew imposed at 3 p.m. Saturday.
North of Miami, Irma sent water from Biscayne Bay pouring over a 5-foot seawall, while downed trees and branches blocked roads and severed power lines in suburban Miami Shores.
In Boca Raton, residents who had ignored evacuation orders gathered with a bottle of wine to seek safety from tornado warnings in a stairwell of the Patrician Condominiums building.
Earlier, building resident Steve Otto, 72, insisted he made the right decision by staying put — even though his sixth-floor terrace door was ripped off its hinges and blown away.
“This is still the safest place to be,” the retired postal worker from New York said after a neighbor boarded up the opening.
At one point during the storm, Irma caused a “negative surge” that sucked water out of Tampa and Hurricane bays — grounding boats and leaving sea life visible — creating a stunning and strange scene before it was expected to spit it all back, and more.
Until Irma, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, with a population of about 3 million, had not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane since 1921.
“I’ve been here with other storms, other hurricanes. But this one scares me,” Sally Carlson said as she snapped photos of the waves crashing against boats. “Let’s just say a prayer we hope we make it through.”