Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Irma ravages islands, heads for Bahamas
Floridians pack roads out as Category 5 storm nears
MIAMI — Caribbean islands pummeled by Hurricane Irma began to grapple with the storm’s toll Thursday as residents of south Florida packed highways heading north, seeking safer ground as Category 5 Irma churned closer.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami issued a hurricane watch Thursday for the southernmost part of Florida, the first such alert Irma has prompted in the United States. A stormsurge watch, warning of the potential for life-threatening levels of water, also was issued for the southern part of the state, which includes the Florida Keys. Mandatory evacuations of the Keys began Wednesday.
Irma pinwheeled through the Caribbean, leaving in its wake leveled neighborhoods, ravaged seafronts and at
least 11 dead, according to government officials and news reports.
The storm set a track toward the Bahamas, with winds hitting 180 mph and gusts even stronger, according to the hurricane center, which warned of storm surges capable of swallowing vast sections of the coast.
After the Bahamas, Irma’s expected path takes it to Florida, including the ribbon of cities, dense suburbs and swampland that are home to more than 6 million people from Palm Beach to Miami-Dade counties.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott urged extreme caution in the face of a powerful storm that could quickly change course.
“Every Florida family must prepare to evacuate regardless of the coast you live on,” he said.
Scott said evacuations in the state may stretch “coast to coast” from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. With potentially millions of people hitting the highways to escape, Scott said emergency efforts were underway to keep fuel shipments moving to gas stations.
On Thursday morning, Miami- Dade County, the state’s most populous with more than a half-million people, began evacuations along
the coast.
“Take it seriously, because this is the real deal,” said Maj. Jeremy DeHart, a U.S. Air Force Reserve weather officer who flew through the eye of Irma at 10,000 feet.
In Naples, Fla., a Best Buy store opened Thursday morning to about two-dozen shoppers waiting outside. Mike Ducheneau, the manager, said the store had gotten 20 or 30 cellphone chargers delivered the previous night. The shoppers waiting in line flooded to the cellphone section, snatching up the chargers that remained.
“They’re [nearly] always in stock,” Ducheneau said. “This was an anomaly.”
By Thursday morning, as
Irma’s eye moved north off the island of Hispaniola, aid workers in Haiti — a nation already devastated by a major earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 — were preparing for yet another potential disaster.
Concern centered on Haiti’s flood-prone north. Haiti raised its hurricane alert level to red, its highest, and the north coast remained under a hurricane watch as the central coast faced the threat of tropical storm winds and rain.
Aid groups said the national hurricane response appeared to be slow. Many evacuations in the north were set to unfold as rains rapidly approached and low- quality shelters were still being finished.
School was canceled across the country as national warnings went out through social media, radio and television. In some remote towns, word to take shelter was being spread largely through local officials with bullhorns. Though Irma’s eye was on track to pass offshore, even a glancing blow could flood roads and bridges, cause mudslides and topple rickety housing, dealing yet another setback to the hemisphere’s poorest nation.
One key concern was the spread of cholera that’s already plaguing Haiti. International aid groups already have a large presence in the nation because of the series of natural disasters there, and many of the groups said they were ready with teams and vehicles to help distribute medical and food aid.
With Irma moving north of Haiti, aid workers were hoping that a normally unlucky nation could catch a break this time and perhaps avert receiving the worst of the storm.
“We might get lucky, but the preparations to cope with it have been late,” said Javier Alvarez, head of emergency response for the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. “We’re still worried.”
Irma’s strong winds and torrential rains slammed the Dominican Republic on Thursday, damaging homes and inundating streets in the beach towns on the north coast, according to media reports.
Among the towns pounded by the storm were Cabarete and Sosua, part of the Puerto Plata region that’s popular with foreign tourists. More than 5,500 people in the country were evacuated ahead of the storm, officials said.
About 1 million people were without power in Puerto Rico after Irma sideswiped the island overnight, and nearly half the territory’s hospitals were relying on generators. No injuries were reported.
Irma has left behind a string of once-lush islands scoured clean by the storm’s force. Aerial images released by the Dutch Defense Ministry on the island of St. Martin, which is split between Dutch and French control,
showed homes with roofs sheared away and palm trees stripped bare.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said four people were confirmed dead and about 50 were injured on the French side of St. Martin.
At least four people were killed in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and officials said they expected to find more bodies. Authorities described the damage as catastrophic, and said crews were struggling to reopen roads and restore power.
Three more deaths were reported on the British island of Anguilla, independent Barbuda and the Dutch side of St. Martin. Information for this article was contributed by Joel Achenbach, Mark Berman, Anthony Faiola, Lindsay de Feliz, Daniel Cassaday, Francisco Alvarado, Patricia Sullivan, Angela Fritz, Jason Samenow, Sandhya Somashekhar, Brian Murphy and Steven Mufson of The Washington Post; by Evens Sanon, Danica Coto, Ezequiel Lopez Abiu, Anika Kentish, Seth Borenstein, Michael Weissenstein, Samuel Petrequin, Ben Fox, Terry Spencer and Meghan Hoyer of The Associated Press; and by Frances Robles of The New York Times.